The prosecution needs to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt within a criminal proceeding. This is a lawsuit, a civil proceeding. In this case, the prosecution only needs a preponderance of evidence.
Sometimes a paradox means that you don't understand all the facts. Other times, it means that you are simply not on enough hallucinagens. I suggest that the latter is the case here. The paradox only exists because we want to use our concept of time in a realm where we break the laws of our concept of time.
If I enter a time machine in 1999, go back to 1979, then kill the "other me" in 1989, then the "paradox" is that I cannot exist in time 1999 to do these things.
To an observer alive during all this time, they will see one of me until 1979, then sees my evil twin materialize for some unknown reason in 1979. Between 1979 and 1989, the observer sees both myself and "my evil twin" (who is actually myself, but may as well not be). After time 1989, the non-time-traveling me is in a pine box, while the evil twin is walking around.
From this observer's perspective, nothing of particular importance occurs in 1999. Nobody enters the time machine. The fact that my evil twin remembers a particular event in 1999 is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because 1999 is no longer what we think.
To those of us unfamiliar with time travel (I'll assume that's all of us, save the Gallifreyan contingent), 1999 is a fixed series of events. Or at least, the first five months of it is a fixed series of events--we don't remember the other seven months, because "they haven't happened yet". We have a one-to-one correlation between personal time and wall time. That is, we've already experienced "April 1999", and never expect to experience it again.
To my "evil twin", what we call "April 1999" has a many-to-one correlation with his own memory. He can go through April as many times as you can walk through a revolving door.
To the third-party observer, time travel didn't happen. Somebody shows up out of nowhere in 1979 (surely weird, but no paradox). He kills someone who looks like him in 1989, and lives past 1999 and well into the next century. No time travel, no paradox.
So who sees the paradox? The time traveler sees no paradox. Non-time-travelers see no paradox. The only way to see a paradox here is to exist outside of time. The only one I know like that is God Himself, and I don't think that He will get thrown by somebody dinking with a knife and a time machine.
Remember the Bart Simpson correlary to Shrodinger's Cat: "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything". Since nobody can get both the precice position and the precice velocity of a particle, it is arguable that they do not exist. If no observer can record the phenomenon, it didn't happen. Since nobody can witness the paradox, it doesn't exist.
Note: I was kidding about the hallucinogens. If you need to stretch your mind in those sorts of directions, just stay away for four days straight. It works for me;^>
A certain fraction of all our email is going to get inspected, no way around it
At least two ways around it. The first way: stop sending email. Bad idea. The second way: PGP. Good Idea. Especially a copy (like GnuPG) where you can RTFS and self-verify that there is no back door.
I don't particularly use personal PGP today because it is a hassle, and because I tend not to send email that I mind being overread. At work (where serious paydata flows over the wires), PGP is a must.
The more they monitor, the more we must encrypt. We have the tools. With the GPL'd GnuPG, we have them copylefted, so that they cannot take them away. They can only make them illegal.
And if they did that, they would have to imprison a lot of pissed-off hackers who would encrypt stuff anyway. Considering the tremendous geek debt we're in, that's likely to hit the economy hard. Fortunately, Congress tends to avoid things that hit them in the wallet--as long as they understand that it will.
Microsoft can make a clean-room implementation of a Java Virtual Machine. Unless there is are patents on the JVM, this makes sense. A clean-room implementation uses no Sun source and infringes on no Sun copyrights.
I'm guessing (and hoping) that they cannot call such a clean-room implementation "Java". This isn't copyright, this is trademark. Sun has been very enthusiastic about protecting their Java trademark (remember when they were threatening online coffee shops?). I cannot conceive of any legal reason that Microsoft would be able to call it "Java" against Sun's wishes. They may be able to get the Java Compatibility Logo on it if they meet the compatibility tests. However, doing that puts their software back under Sun's control, and makes it hard to break real Java code.
They could use their new language (call it "Latte" for the sake of argument) to embrace and extend Java. In theory, Latte would be a superset of Java that would run exclusively on Windows platforms. In practice, this would depend on Microsoft's ability and desire to do bug-for-bug compatible clean rooms. They may want to make Latte slightly incompatible with Java, just to make sure that Windows "Java" developers would just break down and write Latte code.
Such a situation would be, IMHO, completely legal and absolutely disgusting. Latte arrives as a mostly-compatible replacement for Java, with extensions, and ships for Windows. Thus, you would have to download Java to run all Java apps or applets (thus forcing Web servers to choose between Java applets or Latte applets).
For Microsoft to pull this off, they have to slowly fork the Latte spec away from Java. Fork it too quickly, and you don't suck away from Java; Latte is treated as just "A new Microsoft language". Fork it too slowly, and you increase the time that the languages are compatible. This is a matter of timing, and I think that Microsoft is very good at timing.
Sun, OTOH, can counter this. It is probably easier for Sun to rev Java and pass patches to its paying partners than it is for Microsoft to rev a clean room. Sun could quickly, relentlessly rev Java to render Latte useless. Unfortunately, many customers will not care to keep up. Fast Java revs will drop Java's usefulness. This is thus a "scorched earth" strategy.
How come Java needs such strict legalleze to "protect" the dieing standard from "corruption" and LX86 standard can survive and grow under GPL?
Because, the tighter one's grip, the more star systems will slip through one's fingers.
Sun Microsystems wanted control, specifically so that someone like Microsoft could not "embrace and extend". Linux, with the GPL, gives up that control. You can embrace and extend all you want...so long as you ship your extensions with the source code. In ESR's annotations of the Halloween Documents, he notes that the openness of a development environment paradoxically prevents forking, as forking is the last effort at moving a development process in one's own direction. In an open situation like Linux, where anyone can (and does) enter a change, few people have a reason to fork Linux.
I see two Microsoft strategies to dealing with the LX86 runtime environment. One is to submit code itself (likely under an astroturf front) which sabotages the kernel. This would have to be extremely subtle, if it is doable at all, since bad additions to the kernel will generally get thrown out (binary Darwinism).
The second is to embrace and extend, but outside the kernel level. They cannot E&E in deep kernel (because their extensions would necessarily be copylefted), but nothing is stopping them from creating a payware shared library with The Killer Feature. By doing that, they can get people to write software to their library, thus requiring all users of said software to buy said library. It would be the OS monopoly all over again, but sitting on top of LX86 rather than just the Intel hardware itself.
That is, Microsoft can sacrifice kernel control and still collect their tax. To do so, they would need a Killer Feature that Linux can't provide. The most obvious such feature is Win32 itself. If they ported Win32 to LX86, they would be able to convince vendors to stop porting to Linux, since every LX86 can become a (relatively) proper Windows box.
Do we have countermoves to this strategy? What are the odds of this happening, and the factors that change these odds? IMHO, MS will have to swallow some pride to do this, but they might at that. Then again, it would be at least a partial victory, as Those Of Us Who Know would be able to run around beneath the Gates layer.
The above, my fellow Slashdotters, is a troll. Please take a few minutes to study the warning signs of a troll, to see the dangers of trolls, and to learn the proper way of dealing with a troll.
I am not the most expert of trollologists; I am sure that Slashdot has much better trollologists. I just got here first. Feel free to reply to this to add points I missed, or argue points you think I am wrong about.
How to Recognize a Troll
A troll is a form of luser that makes incindiary remarks in order to get others to lose their cool, thus making worse incindiary remarks and making complete fools out of themselves.
Many trolls are made by anonymous cowards; people who do not want to be recognized. But not every AC is a troll, and not every troller is an AC. Some will troll from their named accounts; those are the brave trolls. What we have here is a specimin of the more cowardly troll.
But more important than the username is the post. The "best" kind of troll post will make a remark specifically engineered to push the hot buttons of the group being trolled (here, Slashdot itself). Additionally, the perfect troll fails to give any useful or arguable information.
Two perfect trolling sentences here are, "The current Linux file system sucks" and "With MS beginning to support the Linux community, Linux will be an improved product.". both hit hit a Slashdot hot button (there is a lot of "Microsoft-is-evil/Linux-is-good" running around here). Both are too vague to provide any useful information.
The Dangers of a Troll
The danger here is that, without any real information to argue, the tendency is to degenerate into a flame war. "The current Linux file system sucks" is not even an arguable fact; it is a broadbased opinion, posted to a group of people who believe the opposite.
A properly placed troll can tempt otherwise rational people into portraying themselves as complete idiots. Especially with Microsoft, this is exceedingly dangerous.
Microsoft would love to portray the Linux community (including Slashdot) as knee-jerk jack-booted weirdo geeks. They want to show us as untrustworthy people who can fly off the handle. This is where Astroturfing comes in.
Microsoft performs "Astroturfing". This means starting up fake grassroots movements. They tried to do this to forestall the DOJ trial, and were exposed. I do not believe that they are above hiring people to troll Slashdot and similar things, in order to show us making complete fools out of ourselves.
How to respond to Trolls
The first thing is how not to respond to a troll. Don't let them sucker you in. Think before you post, and do not post a flaming ball of hatred. This will do you, and Slashdot as a whole, harm. That's why flames get moderated down. But they're still on the record, so you and we still get to look like idiots.
Often, the best way to respond to a troll is to ignore it. This pisses a troll off worse than anything. Some trolls will respond by trolling more. At this point, you get to watch them making complete fools out of themselves. Remember: it is better to be silent and thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt.
The other thing one can do is to note the troll as such. Newbie users won't recognize trolls as well as old farts, so this helps keep the newbies from flaming the trolls. Here, moderation does this. The troll above was moderated up; I disagree with that, so I'm writing this to mark the troll as such.
Again, please feel free to add to this or correct me. Just Say No To Trolls.
The other question is: how deeply can one integrate something into the Linux kernel before open-sourcing it? For all their talk about deep OS integration, we of the Linux community might have a strong case to require them to copyleft IE for Linux.
OTOH, I'm not exactly holding my breath on the port, with or without source code. This is less than vaporware; this is a rumor of vaporware.
I have no problem with the theory of patent law, nor with most of its applications. I have a problem with obvious patents.
You are not supposed to be able to patent the obvious. For example, if someone builds a new method of storing video (say, a new competitor to VHS), one should not be able to patent the concept of using this method to store computer data. Once you leap over the hurdle that digital video data is similar to digital computer data, it is obvious.
Patents should be granted only for non-obvious solutions. The patent in question seems to be related to the use of machines other than the Web server to help construct dynamic Web pages.
Duh.
If that is the case (I obviously haven't read the patent), the above idea is completely obvious and the patent should be overturned.
If you have a Web server and a database, they're likely to be on two separate machines. One is on the firewall, the other is in a protected network. If you want to allow database access through the Web (which is effectively what the Web is for--database access), you have three choices. You can move the Web box inside, you can move the database outside, or you can let the database and its applications sit on the inside and talk to the server on the outside. Guess which one the sysadmins are going to let you do.
In theory, patent offices should not accept obvious patents. In practics, patent office personnel are not experts in every field of technology. This is not their problem--who is an expert in every field of technology? If such a person exists, why would they work in a patent office?
The way the system works is that someone files an obvious patent, rattles a saber, and then someone else in the industry goes to court to prove the patent obvious and thus unenforcable. That is exactly what is going to happen here.
The only way I see the system working better is that the penalty for filing an obvious patent is enough to keep companies from doing that, so that they only file when they have a righteous claim.
If you do end up paying "link for link", then a new market will arise: that of the mutual virtual network. It will probably arise under a different name, but will arise all the same.
Such an industry would not necessarily own network hardware. It would wheel and deal with companies that deploy net links, and it would rent vast quantites of global bandwidth. It would then sublet that stuff to the customer. A customer would sign up with one MVN, and pay them either a flat rate or a per-use rate, and all their data would flow over the bandwidth leased by their MVN.
These would be the bandwidth equivalent of mutual funds; they act as buffers between the end-user (internet user or investor) and the market. MVNs would charge for their expertise in buying good bandwidth cheap (as mutual funds charge for expertise in buying good stock cheap), and pass along some of the bulk rate lease discounts (as mutual funds can do for always buying round lots of stock).
Again, this wouldn't be so much a technology company as a financial outfit. You pay them, they pay the telcos you use. Thus, you get one simple Internet bill.
Do violent games promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Does the current parenting and daycare situation promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Do other factors promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Wimpy answers, aren't they? But I think that they're more correct than what the media has been selling us. People are arguing over yes/no answers to all of these questions. Binary reasoning, it does or it doesn't. Binary reasoning doesn't apply here.
School shootings are a complex problem, and require a complex diagnosis. For most school shootings (or other violent sociopathic events), there are a host of factors that lead to it. Pardon the phrase, but most slashdotters know what I mean: there is no magic bullet. We have to identify the many factors and deal with them accordingly, to reduce the outbreaks.
Guns. The easier the access to guns is, the easier it is to kill people. Giving a sociopath access to a gun makes it easier for them to commit their crimes. Denying access will make it harder, but not impossible; the most desperate will always be able to get guns, and there are certainly ways to kill without guns.
OTOH, guns can be used to teach responsibility. It used to be that you weren't respectable if you didn't carry a gun. Like a car, a motorcycle, or even a pair of alpine skis, however, you must learn how to responsibly use it. This is something that should be taught in grade school, whether people own guns or not. Kids must understand that guns can kill, and that killed people don't come back. Little kids must be able to recognize guns, not to touch them, and to get a grownup to take an unattended gun.
How many of us had driving school and were forced to watch the associated splatter film? That sobers you up. It makes it a lot harder for you to take a car, or a life, lightly. It should be the same with guns.
Do guns cause school shootings? Sort of. There is a correlation, but not a high one.
Games and Media. I lump these together because a game is simply an interactive medium. Here, we show "fun" violence, and people associate violence with fun. Does this desensitize people to killing? My money says that it does. It doesn't do so very effectively. Military boot camp is built to desensitize civilians in the effort to make them soldiers. If Quake did that well enough to make most players killers, the military would just use Quake for its boot camp; it's cheaper.
Media violence desensitizes people a little bit, so those that were on the edge may go over the edge.
Another problem with media violence is that it glorifies unrealistic violence. On TV, someone get hit by a bullet and a little red spot shows up. In Quake or Doom, you can take multiple hits without going down, then recharge your health and armor. The fact is, if you think in terms of this, violence is fun.
Science fiction author and Vietnam combat veteran Joe Haldeman once railed about this. He contended that the media isn't violent enough. He figured that, when you show somebody hit with multiple rounds from a high-caliber weapon, you should show the full grotesque effects of that. IMHO, it is sad that the one bit of violence that television will not show is real, stomach-churning death. Yes, it's horrible. Killing is horrible, and only to be done in the most extreme or circumstances.
Do violent media and games cause school killings? Sort of. I think that there is a correlation, but not a high one.
Parenting. I'll admit, this is my personal "silver bullet". Minors are to be watched. Minors are not fully responsible people; that is why there are parents. Parents are responsible for the welfare of their children, and this implies their psychological well-being.
Some parents take this responsibility more seriously than others. Some parents are almost strangers to their children. Some parents think that "this sort of thing happens to other peoples' kids". Parents must be involved in their kids' lives, and must understand warning signs of impending insanity. I'll say it: All parents should learn how to be parents. Parenting in a natural setting is instinctive. Instincts will not prepare people for parenting in today's artificial settings; that's why we have books, schools, and web sites. If you're not willing to learn how to be a good parent, you should give your children to somebody who is. End of story.
Parents cannot do the job alone, either. That's why we have schools, friends, extracurricular kids' clubs. They all can help. They all are responsible to help, and to learn how to do it as above. But they cannot do the job themselves.
The same people who rail about not trusting the government (I certainly don't trust them) will ship them to government schools for thirteen years and expect the school to make a proper adult out of those children. This is patently stupid.
Parents are the first and last line of defense. They are the first line because they can be the primary influence on the values their children have. They are the last line of defense because they can see their kids slipping into insanity, and call upon resources (school guidance councilers, social workers, clergy, somebody) for help.
Sure, your best parenting efforts won't keep somebody else's kid from flipping their lid. But you can set an example, and demand similar responsibility from other parents.
Does parenting cause school shootings? Sort of. There is a correlation (IMHO bigger than the two above), but it is not the only factor.
Conclusion. These are the three factors that I see. I am sure that others can come up with a half a dozen more. For all I know, there might be a vitamin deficiency problem. I would love to hear more factors.
This is a many factored problem, and requires a many factored solution. We need to be honest. Saying that something is a factor is not saying that it turns all kids into psychopaths, and it isn't saying that the government should move in and control it. You don't need to separate into rabid attackers of an idea and rabid defenders of it; the answer often lies in the middle. I don't think that the government can control this problem. You can, and I can. Let's find the problems, scout out the solutions, and apply them across the board.
I did my HS in the late 80s, and ended up taking two courses involving a computer. It wasn't the best, nor the worst.
The first course used computers without really being a computing course. It was "Keyboarding" (a touch-typing class) taught on PCjrs. The teacher knew zero about PCjrs (good thing there was myself and another geek there, or we wouldn't have booted them), and she probably used to teach typing on manual typewriters. She was a strict disciplinarian, which is exactly what is needed for this course. Touch typing doesn't expand your mind, but is the ultimate drill 'n kill course. While she taught us touch-typing, we taught her a bit about computers and lightweight word processing. Note: this was the type of room that taught IBM to leave the cords on the keyboards. Thirty PC jrs in one room, each of them connected to their keyboard by nothing but infrared and no auth codes--we had lots of fun standing up and aiming our keyboards at each others' computers!
The other course, called "Computer Programming" or somesuch, was on the venerable Apple ][. The teacher, in this case, knew at least a bit about programming. The school didn't have a "CS" department, so it made the course a math elective. If you assume that higher math exists in school to stretch your mind in abstract directions, programming does make for a fine math course.
We spent the first half of the year programming in BASIC, and the second half programming in Pascal.
Three notes to slashdotters still in school.
First, when using computers in a course about computers, some teachers don't mind being taught computers while teaching you the real subject matter. This helps the next class.
Second, anyone who intends to spend their career at a console or terminal should take a typing course. It's boring. It's harsh. It's the worst nightmare of drill 'n kill. But it's useful drill 'n kill. With touch typing, you can just think the words and your fingers will get them into the computer for you. People don't naturally progress from hunt 'n peck to touch typing; the only way I know to gain the skill is the drill 'n kill. It beats burning brainpower over the next forty years watching your keyboard, looking for the 'v' key. Barring direct neural interface, touch typing is the shortest line between you and the box.
Third, enjoy those computer courses where you know more than the teacher. You will still learn something from the teacher, and you may be able to teach the teacher some neat tricks (again, be careful and don't try to show off your wizardly superiority). Most importantly, however, is that you can turn the course into an opportunity to gain school credit for hacking. If you can stump the teacher, you're likely finishing assignments early. Use that opportunity to hack at what you want to hack at--if you have a good teacher, they'll help you in your endeavors. One of the best ways to learn coding is to write code. Consider it a lab course to do exactly that. Besides, it sure beats study hall;^>
I have to disagree on the NT security bit. NT has a secure mode that beats anything we can code into Linux. You can tell that your NT machine has entered secure mode because your entire screen turns blue.
They would have to strangle it from the middle. Even the mighty MS can't enter the inner sanctum of the kernel without their offerings to Open Source.
Assuming that the GPL stands, everything inside the kernel itself has to be copylefted. Applications don't have to be, as merely making system calls isn't considered "linking" for copyleft purposes. I don't know the rules concerning kernel "modules"; can somebody follow up with that?
Pure kernel code, therefore, is fair game. If Microsoft wants to (say) add a Win32 ABI down there, it is copylefted or they are sued. We grab the Win32 ABI and clean it up. Linux: More Unix than Unix, More Windows than Windows.
They could do something of this sort as a shared library, perhaps. If they simply did a Win32 ABI as a.so, then they would have a payware WINE. Whoop dee doo.
For Microsoft to properly invade Linux, they would have to use proprietary ware. If they invaded with OSS, we would eat it and improve it. If they invade with closed source, they will probably do so at the.so layer. To do this, they would need to produce The Killer Feature. The feature would have to be instantly demanded by everybody, and impossible for the OSS community to match quickly. Anybody have ideas as to what that might be?
If I was on that "Linux Group", the first thing I would do is read slashdot!
Believe you me, they will. And some of us will react by trying to hide what we are doing from Microsoft. The act of hiding stuff from Microsoft is what may kill Open Source (or at least maim it for a decade or two). Whether Microsoft understands this or not, I do not know.
The chief difference between Microsoft and Linux development models is openness. One of the central theories of Open Source is that a million people, communicating for all the world to see via a medium that supports it, can outthink a thousand people sworn to secrecy.
This isn't just Open Source theory, either; it's cryptography theory. The best cryptographic algorithms are published so that people can try to crack them. Only the keys are kept secret; the code itself is exposed to the light of day, and the attacks of thousands of professional crackers. A cracker from J. Random Big Software House, paid to verify the integrity of an encryption algorithm, can find a bug well before a criminal is likely to. The professional cracker finds the bug, others analyze it and release patches, and the cracker is again thwarted.
Don't worry about Microsoft knowing the strategies of the Open Source movement; they will. We can't prevent that without secretive communications. Once we do that, we're playing the proprietary game, and we have lost. History will see OSS as an unworkably idealistic social theory, and the names of RMS and ESR will be hung up like that of Karl Marx.
When I think of a strategy that Microsoft can use, I post it here so that the OSS can be prepared with a counterstrategy. Basically, I treat any possible Microsoft strategic attack as a bug in the Open Source movement. Sure, Microsoft will be able to see it.
Big deal. I don't have enough ego to think that I can come up with many good anti-OSS strategies that they didn't. I'm not smart enough to give Microsoft a lot of good ideas.
But every time I post a possible Microsoft strategy, thousands of Slashdotters see it. With enough eyes, all Microsoft strategies are counterable. I post Microsoft strategies because we can produce countermeasures faster than they can utilize the strategies.
Post strategies that Microsoft can use. Post counterstrategies if you can come up with them. For God's sake, don't shut up! As the gay community taught the OSS community:
2) Linux is cheaper, and runs on cheaper hardware.
Watch out before you say this. MS can twist that around to "Linux is a cheap OS for cheap little jobs. Use NT to get real work done".
Linux runs leaner than NT, and thus squeezes more out of your hardware. It can run on cheaper hardware than NT can even consider. The flip side is that, if you need to max out your capabilities, you can buy maximal hardware and use Linux to get performance that NT cannot meet with current technology.
I bring to mind two recent benchmarks; the Mindcraft test and IBM's ray-tracing with Beowulf. In the former, NT outperformed Linux on the exact same hardware. This is not a big surprise, simply because a good NT box and a good Linux box aren't always the same. Slashdot was flooded with ideas on how to run Linux faster on less expensive hardware. Linux outperforms NT per hardware dollar, not necessarily on the same hardware configuration.
With the IBM test, they took 17 machines worth a total of $150,000, installed Red Hat and Beowulf, and started doing ray-tracing calculations. The numbers escape me, but it effectively matched the speed of a Cray YMP costing $5.5M. I consider this a good definition of "high end computing". I pity the person who wants to do this with NT, at any price.
Methinks that Linux and the DOJ trial are in an interesting feedback loop.
Linux has been ready for the "buzz explosion" for some time now. Microsoft went into the DOJ trial, nad has been failing miserably. They have needed to show that there is competition, that they are not a monopoly.
I believe that tons of money got invested into Linux precisely because of the DOJ trial. Before this trial, nothing was keeping Microsoft from cutting off anybody who supported Linux.
Now that the buzz is in full explosion, MS can show the DOJ that it is competition and attack it as such. Personally, I don't care how the trial goes; the fact that it happened at all has made the difference.
Another side effect of the trial is that Microsoft is forced to spout the virtues of Linux to the courts to defend the theory that Linux is indeed a contender. They then have to turn around and tell the market that Linux is not a contender.
With some money and some lawyers, Microsoft will start finding themselves back in court--for false advertising, slander, and/or perjury. You cannot lie under oath, you cannot make false claims in advertising, so contradicting your testimony with your marketing is a criminal offense of one sort or another.
My question is, who has both the money and the motive to spend it on lawyers? Everybody seems to be investing in Red Hat, but I don't know their budgetary situation. IMHO, the best anti-FUD is to overturn said FUD in court.
The trick is to keep Microsoft fighting fair. They win when they can operate unhindered by the law. They lose when the law catches up with them.
Speak the truth. It's a novel approach in this biz, but it's the Open Source approach. When you get your favorite Linux distro, the source CD says "Here's how we did it!" There is no back-room stuff about how this stuff is put together. You get the stuff with the blueprints.
The truth is that half-hearted OSS doesn't work. OSS contributors won't contribute if they feel that they are being used, and those contributors tend to know if they are or not. Does OSS work as a post-proprietary conversion? The experiments in Netscape and Apple are still taking place. We'll tell people the truth when we figure out what it is.
Our advantage over Microsoft is that we cherish the truth, and we share it promiscuously. Never let them take that advantage away from us. The truth shall set your code free.
I agree; No matter what Microsoft does, there will be people on/. either randomly flaming them, spreading FUD about them, or just ranting. Microsoft cannot stop that. That is simply because there are enough people on this board that everybody gets flamed, FUDded, or ranted against. Star Wars gets it. Various Linux distros get it. Politicians get it. Jon Katz gets it;^>. No matter what, everybody gets some level of flame here.
Microsoft, of course, is in the top five of favorite/. flame targets. IMHO, they have earned it. No situation is hopeless, and it is never too late to reform. If Microsoft wanted to, they could make themselves into the sort of company that would be respected and even praised here. It would be a long journey.
Nothing that they say can impress your average Slashdotter, simply because we are so used to the lies that they spout. Lie enough times, and you lose credibility. These are the masters of vaporware; these are the people who told us that Windows 95 no longer runs on a DOS; these are the ones stating that the open source of Linux makes it a security risk (quite the opposite; ask people in the crypto or security biz); these are the ones telling us that, with Linux, "users must manually synchronize user accounts across servers". Has anybody heard of NIS?
I don't remember who said it first, but what they do speaks so loudly that we cannot hear what they say. This holds as truly for Microsoft as for anyone. So what do they do? They ship bloatware. They ship technically incompetent software. They ship "Operating Systems" (in quotes because people don't always agree on the definition of that term) that logs its uptime in days rather than months. They put BSOD in the vernacular. And that's just their software.
Their business practices are arguably worse. They destroy the markets for their competitors (Netscape--Web Browser market). They misappropriate the licenses they purchase from other vendors to sabotage their products (Sun Microsystems--Java technology). They steal technology outright and ship it as their own (Stac--Disk compression technology, back in the DOS 6.x days). They ignore or pervert court orders (Netscape again--the "no bundling" agreement). Whether Microsoft is a monopoly depends on the defintion of that term--and the jury is literally still out on that one. However, they are undeniably a rogue corporation that operates above the law.
The sheer power of Microsoft, plus the willingness to ignore ethical or legal restrictions, and their current focus on Linux, tends to unsettle your average Linux enthusiast. When one looks at the past history of Microsoft, one must be out of one's gourd to trust them at all.
Microsoft can change all this. I think that the Linux zeal would be greatly lessened if Microsoft actually released a quality OS; one that is stable under fire, doesn't attempt to take up $1,000 of hardware by itself, and allows you to easily do the things that you bought the computer to do. I think that they couldn't enhance Windows to do that, but would have to start from scratch again. However, it could be done.
Microsoft can gain Slashdot kudos simply by not lying. Almost everybody twists the truth a little bit, revealing the stuff in their favor and covering up the stuff that isn't. This is a far cry from making provably false statements in order to fool the chumps.
Microsoft can impress us by doing the right thing. It would take a bit of doing so to show that they have truly changed their stripes, but it would be welcome here. Microsoft has long passed the point where they could impress us by talking about doing the right thing.
We're skeptical--I list some of the reasons why above. Some of us are still hopeful--stranger things have happened--but we are still skeptical. Hope doesn't mean stupidity, after all.
IIRC, Van Kempen scooped up the linux.com domain to prevent any one Linux distribution from taking the domain and thus the crown of "The One True Linux". One of the reasons he responded to the VA Research bid is because it's in VA's best financial interests to be distribution-agnostic.
No need to illegally download it. Straight PGP from NAI is available to our non-US Slashdotters (and indeed anyone outside the US) at http://www.pgpinternational.com. This is kept in the Netherlands. Code gets there via a legal loophole in the ITAR laws. Specifically, the same encryption that is illegal to export electronically can be exported as source code printed in a book. Print the book, publish it overseas, cut the pages out, scan it, compile it.
IIRC, there are "freeware" versions there for personal use only. These should only use Diffie-Hellman keys rather than RSA keys (and thus be backwards-incompatible, unable to talk to PGP 4.0 and below). Using DH rather than RSA avoids the RSA patent.
Between this and GnuPG, there are now at least two vendors for legal downloads. The NAI stuff described above is sold (with RSA and other things bolted on) as payware; I can personally vouch that it is good compared to most payware. Those who know GnuPG will be able to say if GnuPG is technically better or worse.
Re:insulting, rude, bully, freedom
on
GNU Inside?
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· Score: 5
Thanks to the liberal, open-minded scheme that GNU utilities are distributed under you can call it _anything_you_like. You are not being prevented from calling it_anything_you_like.
So long as you don't say it in his prescence. If you do so, he will repeatedly infringe upon your right to free speech by interrupting you until you use his terminology. He prevents you from saying your peace with your words in his presence. Specifically, he has done this during press conferences--he wouldn't even let a reporter finish a question with the word "Linux" in it until said reporter amended it to "GNU/Linux". Politicians in debate have more respect than that.
RMS certainly has the freedom to call it GNU/Linux, and in fact to ask that we do. The way that he does it (interrupting you until you capitulate) is an abuse of free speech and an infringement on everyone else's free speech. You can correct me after I've finished, thank you.
RMS is merely stating his viewpoint that more credit should be given to the GNU project.
Interpert it that way if you wish. Literally, RMS is stating his viewpoint that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. I've heard a couple of explanations for this, but none from RMS himself.
You are insisting that HE capitulates to what YOU want to call the system that you run every day. To stridently attack someone for stating their viewpoint, as you do in this post, belies your claim to love freedom. Or perhaps its just YOUR freedom that you care about?
I am insisting upon the right to speak my dissenting viewpoint, in my own words. He has the right to tell me what he thinks I should call it. My problem with RMS in this respect (and understand that I have a lot of respect for this man otherwise) is that he will usurp the floor and hold it hostage while you have it, in order to get his words to come out of your mouth. He denies you freedom of speech. This is entirely different from complaining about it when he has the floor.
1: Microsoft does nothing remotely like Open Source. Business as usual.
2: Microsoft fully embraces Open Source and copylefts the entirety of Windows. By embracing I mean getting the mindset, and believing in it. Nothing less than Netscape's own buy-in would really count. This would take nothing less than a certifyable miracle (or heavy drugs). If this happens, a beautiful thing will happen. A fully Open Source Windows would turn into something worth running in a few years.
3: Microsoft pays lip service to Open Source and tries to fit it into their current business model. They try to embrace and extend OSS, for development gain and/or mindshare gain.
If they choose option 3, they play to their own weakness and will lose in both development cycles and mindshare.
Technically, a partial Open Source strategy for Microsoft will work about as well as those of Apple and Al Gore. They will not get any assistance from the hacker community at large.
Regarding mindshare, they will gain kudos only with those who think that Open Source is a Good Thing, but don't have a clue about what it is. I am not cynical enough to believe that there is a significant population of PHBs who meet those criteria.
We hold the advantage precisely because Open Source is so antiintuitive. If one knows a little about Open Source, one concludes that the OSS buzz is coming from certified lunatics. One has to fully grok OSS to think that it's useful. even most PHBs think that Open Source is some form of madness. Those who think that OSS is a Good Thing are, by and large, those who understand it. And they will see the problems with a half-hearted approach.
There are some that belive in the Gospel According to Bill; the term Open Source will turn from evil to wonderful the instant Microsoft "embraces" it. However, Microsoft can gain mindshare out of mindless MS zealots by releasing the Bill Gates Cardio Kickboxing workout DVD-ROM.
An IT with a billon to spend, "shure" don't will ever use Linux.
An IT department with that sort of a budget will find Linux to be rather useful for some applications, actually. With that size of a budget, one can make an in-house Linux support team. Having such a team and using Linux keeps you from relying on a vendor's support team. Such a team allows you to implement mission-critical bug fixes on your schedule, not that of your vendor. And believe you me, if you are big enough to have a $1B budget, time is measured in thousands of dollars per minute. Waiting a month for a bug that takes a week to fix is expensive.
I'll admit it; if Linux were beating NT in these benchmarks, we wouldn't be looking for reasons. We wouldn't need to. The new data would simply corroborate the old data. If Microsoft had a problem with the results, countering it is their problem.
If you perform an experiment to study gravity, and you get a value for g of 32 ft per second squared, you don't go looking for what you did wrong--other experiments show this result as well. If you find that g=14 feet per second squared, you start analyzing the experiment rather than rewriting the physics texts.
In the Real World, Linux appears to outperform NT. In most benchmarks, Linux solutions appear to outperform NT solutions. Two Microsoft organs create benchmarks, and the NT solution outperforms the Linux solution.
We look for holes in the benchmarks because we smell a rat. We've found a rat or N--some big ones.
What we have learned is that benchmarks can be easily cooked. If someone with a vested interest controls enough variables, one can create a pathological case where one's interests win.
If it wasn't a cooked test, there would still be people yelling. This is not a good thing. However, this is a cooked test. Linux can beat NT in a lot of ways, including performance-wise. Linux isn't strong enough to beat NT with one arm tied behind its back, especially when Microsoft chooses the arm.
OTOH, anybody know how well NT does at ray-tracing? IBM had some fun with Linux and ray-tracing a while back...
(Note: this is an odder reference than most on Slashdot. The reference is to a Japanese anime by the name of Neon Genesis Evangelion. For further research, see http://www.anipike.com)
Actually, the nice thing is that Linux already solves the problem that the original Magi triad had. Besides the inherent virus protection, the sheer number of daemons running around your average Linux box should be sufficient to defeat any attacking Angels.
And don't get into a huff about Absolute Terror fields, either. Linux holds its own against Microsoft's AT field (well, what better description for FUD than Absolute Terror?).
Slashdot Mirror
The prosecution needs to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt within a criminal proceeding. This is a lawsuit, a civil proceeding. In this case, the prosecution only needs a preponderance of evidence.
If I enter a time machine in 1999, go back to 1979, then kill the "other me" in 1989, then the "paradox" is that I cannot exist in time 1999 to do these things.
To an observer alive during all this time, they will see one of me until 1979, then sees my evil twin materialize for some unknown reason in 1979. Between 1979 and 1989, the observer sees both myself and "my evil twin" (who is actually myself, but may as well not be). After time 1989, the non-time-traveling me is in a pine box, while the evil twin is walking around.
From this observer's perspective, nothing of particular importance occurs in 1999. Nobody enters the time machine. The fact that my evil twin remembers a particular event in 1999 is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because 1999 is no longer what we think.
To those of us unfamiliar with time travel (I'll assume that's all of us, save the Gallifreyan contingent), 1999 is a fixed series of events. Or at least, the first five months of it is a fixed series of events--we don't remember the other seven months, because "they haven't happened yet". We have a one-to-one correlation between personal time and wall time. That is, we've already experienced "April 1999", and never expect to experience it again.
To my "evil twin", what we call "April 1999" has a many-to-one correlation with his own memory. He can go through April as many times as you can walk through a revolving door.
To the third-party observer, time travel didn't happen. Somebody shows up out of nowhere in 1979 (surely weird, but no paradox). He kills someone who looks like him in 1989, and lives past 1999 and well into the next century. No time travel, no paradox.
So who sees the paradox? The time traveler sees no paradox. Non-time-travelers see no paradox. The only way to see a paradox here is to exist outside of time. The only one I know like that is God Himself, and I don't think that He will get thrown by somebody dinking with a knife and a time machine.
Remember the Bart Simpson correlary to Shrodinger's Cat: "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything". Since nobody can get both the precice position and the precice velocity of a particle, it is arguable that they do not exist. If no observer can record the phenomenon, it didn't happen. Since nobody can witness the paradox, it doesn't exist.
Note: I was kidding about the hallucinogens. If you need to stretch your mind in those sorts of directions, just stay away for four days straight. It works for me ;^>
At least two ways around it. The first way: stop sending email. Bad idea. The second way: PGP. Good Idea. Especially a copy (like GnuPG) where you can RTFS and self-verify that there is no back door.
I don't particularly use personal PGP today because it is a hassle, and because I tend not to send email that I mind being overread. At work (where serious paydata flows over the wires), PGP is a must.
The more they monitor, the more we must encrypt. We have the tools. With the GPL'd GnuPG, we have them copylefted, so that they cannot take them away. They can only make them illegal.
And if they did that, they would have to imprison a lot of pissed-off hackers who would encrypt stuff anyway. Considering the tremendous geek debt we're in, that's likely to hit the economy hard. Fortunately, Congress tends to avoid things that hit them in the wallet--as long as they understand that it will.
Microsoft can make a clean-room implementation of a Java Virtual Machine. Unless there is are patents on the JVM, this makes sense. A clean-room implementation uses no Sun source and infringes on no Sun copyrights.
I'm guessing (and hoping) that they cannot call such a clean-room implementation "Java". This isn't copyright, this is trademark. Sun has been very enthusiastic about protecting their Java trademark (remember when they were threatening online coffee shops?). I cannot conceive of any legal reason that Microsoft would be able to call it "Java" against Sun's wishes. They may be able to get the Java Compatibility Logo on it if they meet the compatibility tests. However, doing that puts their software back under Sun's control, and makes it hard to break real Java code.
They could use their new language (call it "Latte" for the sake of argument) to embrace and extend Java. In theory, Latte would be a superset of Java that would run exclusively on Windows platforms. In practice, this would depend on Microsoft's ability and desire to do bug-for-bug compatible clean rooms. They may want to make Latte slightly incompatible with Java, just to make sure that Windows "Java" developers would just break down and write Latte code.
Such a situation would be, IMHO, completely legal and absolutely disgusting. Latte arrives as a mostly-compatible replacement for Java, with extensions, and ships for Windows. Thus, you would have to download Java to run all Java apps or applets (thus forcing Web servers to choose between Java applets or Latte applets).
For Microsoft to pull this off, they have to slowly fork the Latte spec away from Java. Fork it too quickly, and you don't suck away from Java; Latte is treated as just "A new Microsoft language". Fork it too slowly, and you increase the time that the languages are compatible. This is a matter of timing, and I think that Microsoft is very good at timing.
Sun, OTOH, can counter this. It is probably easier for Sun to rev Java and pass patches to its paying partners than it is for Microsoft to rev a clean room. Sun could quickly, relentlessly rev Java to render Latte useless. Unfortunately, many customers will not care to keep up. Fast Java revs will drop Java's usefulness. This is thus a "scorched earth" strategy.
Anybody got better ideas?
Because, the tighter one's grip, the more star systems will slip through one's fingers.
Sun Microsystems wanted control, specifically so that someone like Microsoft could not "embrace and extend". Linux, with the GPL, gives up that control. You can embrace and extend all you want...so long as you ship your extensions with the source code. In ESR's annotations of the Halloween Documents, he notes that the openness of a development environment paradoxically prevents forking, as forking is the last effort at moving a development process in one's own direction. In an open situation like Linux, where anyone can (and does) enter a change, few people have a reason to fork Linux.
I see two Microsoft strategies to dealing with the LX86 runtime environment. One is to submit code itself (likely under an astroturf front) which sabotages the kernel. This would have to be extremely subtle, if it is doable at all, since bad additions to the kernel will generally get thrown out (binary Darwinism).
The second is to embrace and extend, but outside the kernel level. They cannot E&E in deep kernel (because their extensions would necessarily be copylefted), but nothing is stopping them from creating a payware shared library with The Killer Feature. By doing that, they can get people to write software to their library, thus requiring all users of said software to buy said library. It would be the OS monopoly all over again, but sitting on top of LX86 rather than just the Intel hardware itself.
That is, Microsoft can sacrifice kernel control and still collect their tax. To do so, they would need a Killer Feature that Linux can't provide. The most obvious such feature is Win32 itself. If they ported Win32 to LX86, they would be able to convince vendors to stop porting to Linux, since every LX86 can become a (relatively) proper Windows box.
Do we have countermoves to this strategy? What are the odds of this happening, and the factors that change these odds? IMHO, MS will have to swallow some pride to do this, but they might at that. Then again, it would be at least a partial victory, as Those Of Us Who Know would be able to run around beneath the Gates layer.
I am not the most expert of trollologists; I am sure that Slashdot has much better trollologists. I just got here first. Feel free to reply to this to add points I missed, or argue points you think I am wrong about.
How to Recognize a Troll
A troll is a form of luser that makes incindiary remarks in order to get others to lose their cool, thus making worse incindiary remarks and making complete fools out of themselves.
Many trolls are made by anonymous cowards; people who do not want to be recognized. But not every AC is a troll, and not every troller is an AC. Some will troll from their named accounts; those are the brave trolls. What we have here is a specimin of the more cowardly troll.
But more important than the username is the post. The "best" kind of troll post will make a remark specifically engineered to push the hot buttons of the group being trolled (here, Slashdot itself). Additionally, the perfect troll fails to give any useful or arguable information.
Two perfect trolling sentences here are, "The current Linux file system sucks" and "With MS beginning to support the Linux community, Linux will be an improved product.". both hit hit a Slashdot hot button (there is a lot of "Microsoft-is-evil/Linux-is-good" running around here). Both are too vague to provide any useful information.
The Dangers of a Troll
The danger here is that, without any real information to argue, the tendency is to degenerate into a flame war. "The current Linux file system sucks" is not even an arguable fact; it is a broadbased opinion, posted to a group of people who believe the opposite.
A properly placed troll can tempt otherwise rational people into portraying themselves as complete idiots. Especially with Microsoft, this is exceedingly dangerous.
Microsoft would love to portray the Linux community (including Slashdot) as knee-jerk jack-booted weirdo geeks. They want to show us as untrustworthy people who can fly off the handle. This is where Astroturfing comes in.
Microsoft performs "Astroturfing". This means starting up fake grassroots movements. They tried to do this to forestall the DOJ trial, and were exposed. I do not believe that they are above hiring people to troll Slashdot and similar things, in order to show us making complete fools out of ourselves.
How to respond to Trolls
The first thing is how not to respond to a troll. Don't let them sucker you in. Think before you post, and do not post a flaming ball of hatred. This will do you, and Slashdot as a whole, harm. That's why flames get moderated down. But they're still on the record, so you and we still get to look like idiots.
Often, the best way to respond to a troll is to ignore it. This pisses a troll off worse than anything. Some trolls will respond by trolling more. At this point, you get to watch them making complete fools out of themselves. Remember: it is better to be silent and thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt.
The other thing one can do is to note the troll as such. Newbie users won't recognize trolls as well as old farts, so this helps keep the newbies from flaming the trolls. Here, moderation does this. The troll above was moderated up; I disagree with that, so I'm writing this to mark the troll as such.
Again, please feel free to add to this or correct me. Just Say No To Trolls.
OTOH, I'm not exactly holding my breath on the port, with or without source code. This is less than vaporware; this is a rumor of vaporware.
You are not supposed to be able to patent the obvious. For example, if someone builds a new method of storing video (say, a new competitor to VHS), one should not be able to patent the concept of using this method to store computer data. Once you leap over the hurdle that digital video data is similar to digital computer data, it is obvious.
Patents should be granted only for non-obvious solutions. The patent in question seems to be related to the use of machines other than the Web server to help construct dynamic Web pages.
Duh.
If that is the case (I obviously haven't read the patent), the above idea is completely obvious and the patent should be overturned.
If you have a Web server and a database, they're likely to be on two separate machines. One is on the firewall, the other is in a protected network. If you want to allow database access through the Web (which is effectively what the Web is for--database access), you have three choices. You can move the Web box inside, you can move the database outside, or you can let the database and its applications sit on the inside and talk to the server on the outside. Guess which one the sysadmins are going to let you do.
In theory, patent offices should not accept obvious patents. In practics, patent office personnel are not experts in every field of technology. This is not their problem--who is an expert in every field of technology? If such a person exists, why would they work in a patent office?
The way the system works is that someone files an obvious patent, rattles a saber, and then someone else in the industry goes to court to prove the patent obvious and thus unenforcable. That is exactly what is going to happen here.
The only way I see the system working better is that the penalty for filing an obvious patent is enough to keep companies from doing that, so that they only file when they have a righteous claim.
Such an industry would not necessarily own network hardware. It would wheel and deal with companies that deploy net links, and it would rent vast quantites of global bandwidth. It would then sublet that stuff to the customer. A customer would sign up with one MVN, and pay them either a flat rate or a per-use rate, and all their data would flow over the bandwidth leased by their MVN.
These would be the bandwidth equivalent of mutual funds; they act as buffers between the end-user (internet user or investor) and the market. MVNs would charge for their expertise in buying good bandwidth cheap (as mutual funds charge for expertise in buying good stock cheap), and pass along some of the bulk rate lease discounts (as mutual funds can do for always buying round lots of stock).
Again, this wouldn't be so much a technology company as a financial outfit. You pay them, they pay the telcos you use. Thus, you get one simple Internet bill.
Do violent games promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Does the current parenting and daycare situation promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Do other factors promote the school shootings? Sort of.
Wimpy answers, aren't they? But I think that they're more correct than what the media has been selling us. People are arguing over yes/no answers to all of these questions. Binary reasoning, it does or it doesn't. Binary reasoning doesn't apply here.
School shootings are a complex problem, and require a complex diagnosis. For most school shootings (or other violent sociopathic events), there are a host of factors that lead to it. Pardon the phrase, but most slashdotters know what I mean: there is no magic bullet. We have to identify the many factors and deal with them accordingly, to reduce the outbreaks.
Guns. The easier the access to guns is, the easier it is to kill people. Giving a sociopath access to a gun makes it easier for them to commit their crimes. Denying access will make it harder, but not impossible; the most desperate will always be able to get guns, and there are certainly ways to kill without guns.
OTOH, guns can be used to teach responsibility. It used to be that you weren't respectable if you didn't carry a gun. Like a car, a motorcycle, or even a pair of alpine skis, however, you must learn how to responsibly use it. This is something that should be taught in grade school, whether people own guns or not. Kids must understand that guns can kill, and that killed people don't come back. Little kids must be able to recognize guns, not to touch them, and to get a grownup to take an unattended gun.
How many of us had driving school and were forced to watch the associated splatter film? That sobers you up. It makes it a lot harder for you to take a car, or a life, lightly. It should be the same with guns.
Do guns cause school shootings? Sort of. There is a correlation, but not a high one.
Games and Media. I lump these together because a game is simply an interactive medium. Here, we show "fun" violence, and people associate violence with fun. Does this desensitize people to killing? My money says that it does. It doesn't do so very effectively. Military boot camp is built to desensitize civilians in the effort to make them soldiers. If Quake did that well enough to make most players killers, the military would just use Quake for its boot camp; it's cheaper.
Media violence desensitizes people a little bit, so those that were on the edge may go over the edge.
Another problem with media violence is that it glorifies unrealistic violence. On TV, someone get hit by a bullet and a little red spot shows up. In Quake or Doom, you can take multiple hits without going down, then recharge your health and armor. The fact is, if you think in terms of this, violence is fun.
Science fiction author and Vietnam combat veteran Joe Haldeman once railed about this. He contended that the media isn't violent enough. He figured that, when you show somebody hit with multiple rounds from a high-caliber weapon, you should show the full grotesque effects of that. IMHO, it is sad that the one bit of violence that television will not show is real, stomach-churning death. Yes, it's horrible. Killing is horrible, and only to be done in the most extreme or circumstances.
Do violent media and games cause school killings? Sort of. I think that there is a correlation, but not a high one.
Parenting. I'll admit, this is my personal "silver bullet". Minors are to be watched. Minors are not fully responsible people; that is why there are parents. Parents are responsible for the welfare of their children, and this implies their psychological well-being.
Some parents take this responsibility more seriously than others. Some parents are almost strangers to their children. Some parents think that "this sort of thing happens to other peoples' kids". Parents must be involved in their kids' lives, and must understand warning signs of impending insanity. I'll say it: All parents should learn how to be parents. Parenting in a natural setting is instinctive. Instincts will not prepare people for parenting in today's artificial settings; that's why we have books, schools, and web sites. If you're not willing to learn how to be a good parent, you should give your children to somebody who is. End of story.
Parents cannot do the job alone, either. That's why we have schools, friends, extracurricular kids' clubs. They all can help. They all are responsible to help, and to learn how to do it as above. But they cannot do the job themselves.
The same people who rail about not trusting the government (I certainly don't trust them) will ship them to government schools for thirteen years and expect the school to make a proper adult out of those children. This is patently stupid.
Parents are the first and last line of defense. They are the first line because they can be the primary influence on the values their children have. They are the last line of defense because they can see their kids slipping into insanity, and call upon resources (school guidance councilers, social workers, clergy, somebody) for help.
Sure, your best parenting efforts won't keep somebody else's kid from flipping their lid. But you can set an example, and demand similar responsibility from other parents.
Does parenting cause school shootings? Sort of. There is a correlation (IMHO bigger than the two above), but it is not the only factor.
Conclusion. These are the three factors that I see. I am sure that others can come up with a half a dozen more. For all I know, there might be a vitamin deficiency problem. I would love to hear more factors.
This is a many factored problem, and requires a many factored solution. We need to be honest. Saying that something is a factor is not saying that it turns all kids into psychopaths, and it isn't saying that the government should move in and control it. You don't need to separate into rabid attackers of an idea and rabid defenders of it; the answer often lies in the middle. I don't think that the government can control this problem. You can, and I can. Let's find the problems, scout out the solutions, and apply them across the board.
The first course used computers without really being a computing course. It was "Keyboarding" (a touch-typing class) taught on PCjrs. The teacher knew zero about PCjrs (good thing there was myself and another geek there, or we wouldn't have booted them), and she probably used to teach typing on manual typewriters. She was a strict disciplinarian, which is exactly what is needed for this course. Touch typing doesn't expand your mind, but is the ultimate drill 'n kill course. While she taught us touch-typing, we taught her a bit about computers and lightweight word processing. Note: this was the type of room that taught IBM to leave the cords on the keyboards. Thirty PC jrs in one room, each of them connected to their keyboard by nothing but infrared and no auth codes--we had lots of fun standing up and aiming our keyboards at each others' computers!
The other course, called "Computer Programming" or somesuch, was on the venerable Apple ][. The teacher, in this case, knew at least a bit about programming. The school didn't have a "CS" department, so it made the course a math elective. If you assume that higher math exists in school to stretch your mind in abstract directions, programming does make for a fine math course.
We spent the first half of the year programming in BASIC, and the second half programming in Pascal.
Three notes to slashdotters still in school.
First, when using computers in a course about computers, some teachers don't mind being taught computers while teaching you the real subject matter. This helps the next class.
Second, anyone who intends to spend their career at a console or terminal should take a typing course. It's boring. It's harsh. It's the worst nightmare of drill 'n kill. But it's useful drill 'n kill. With touch typing, you can just think the words and your fingers will get them into the computer for you. People don't naturally progress from hunt 'n peck to touch typing; the only way I know to gain the skill is the drill 'n kill. It beats burning brainpower over the next forty years watching your keyboard, looking for the 'v' key. Barring direct neural interface, touch typing is the shortest line between you and the box.
Third, enjoy those computer courses where you know more than the teacher. You will still learn something from the teacher, and you may be able to teach the teacher some neat tricks (again, be careful and don't try to show off your wizardly superiority). Most importantly, however, is that you can turn the course into an opportunity to gain school credit for hacking. If you can stump the teacher, you're likely finishing assignments early. Use that opportunity to hack at what you want to hack at--if you have a good teacher, they'll help you in your endeavors. One of the best ways to learn coding is to write code. Consider it a lab course to do exactly that. Besides, it sure beats study hall ;^>
I have to disagree on the NT security bit. NT has a secure mode that beats anything we can code into Linux. You can tell that your NT machine has entered secure mode because your entire screen turns blue.
Assuming that the GPL stands, everything inside the kernel itself has to be copylefted. Applications don't have to be, as merely making system calls isn't considered "linking" for copyleft purposes. I don't know the rules concerning kernel "modules"; can somebody follow up with that?
Pure kernel code, therefore, is fair game. If Microsoft wants to (say) add a Win32 ABI down there, it is copylefted or they are sued. We grab the Win32 ABI and clean it up. Linux: More Unix than Unix, More Windows than Windows.
They could do something of this sort as a shared library, perhaps. If they simply did a Win32 ABI as a .so, then they would have a payware WINE. Whoop dee doo.
For Microsoft to properly invade Linux, they would have to use proprietary ware. If they invaded with OSS, we would eat it and improve it. If they invade with closed source, they will probably do so at the .so layer. To do this, they would need to produce The Killer Feature. The feature would have to be instantly demanded by everybody, and impossible for the OSS community to match quickly. Anybody have ideas as to what that might be?
Believe you me, they will. And some of us will react by trying to hide what we are doing from Microsoft. The act of hiding stuff from Microsoft is what may kill Open Source (or at least maim it for a decade or two). Whether Microsoft understands this or not, I do not know.
The chief difference between Microsoft and Linux development models is openness. One of the central theories of Open Source is that a million people, communicating for all the world to see via a medium that supports it, can outthink a thousand people sworn to secrecy.
This isn't just Open Source theory, either; it's cryptography theory. The best cryptographic algorithms are published so that people can try to crack them. Only the keys are kept secret; the code itself is exposed to the light of day, and the attacks of thousands of professional crackers. A cracker from J. Random Big Software House, paid to verify the integrity of an encryption algorithm, can find a bug well before a criminal is likely to. The professional cracker finds the bug, others analyze it and release patches, and the cracker is again thwarted.
Don't worry about Microsoft knowing the strategies of the Open Source movement; they will. We can't prevent that without secretive communications. Once we do that, we're playing the proprietary game, and we have lost. History will see OSS as an unworkably idealistic social theory, and the names of RMS and ESR will be hung up like that of Karl Marx.
When I think of a strategy that Microsoft can use, I post it here so that the OSS can be prepared with a counterstrategy. Basically, I treat any possible Microsoft strategic attack as a bug in the Open Source movement. Sure, Microsoft will be able to see it.
Big deal. I don't have enough ego to think that I can come up with many good anti-OSS strategies that they didn't. I'm not smart enough to give Microsoft a lot of good ideas.
But every time I post a possible Microsoft strategy, thousands of Slashdotters see it. With enough eyes, all Microsoft strategies are counterable. I post Microsoft strategies because we can produce countermeasures faster than they can utilize the strategies.
Post strategies that Microsoft can use. Post counterstrategies if you can come up with them. For God's sake, don't shut up! As the gay community taught the OSS community:
Silence = Death
Watch out before you say this. MS can twist that around to "Linux is a cheap OS for cheap little jobs. Use NT to get real work done".
Linux runs leaner than NT, and thus squeezes more out of your hardware. It can run on cheaper hardware than NT can even consider. The flip side is that, if you need to max out your capabilities, you can buy maximal hardware and use Linux to get performance that NT cannot meet with current technology.
I bring to mind two recent benchmarks; the Mindcraft test and IBM's ray-tracing with Beowulf. In the former, NT outperformed Linux on the exact same hardware. This is not a big surprise, simply because a good NT box and a good Linux box aren't always the same. Slashdot was flooded with ideas on how to run Linux faster on less expensive hardware. Linux outperforms NT per hardware dollar, not necessarily on the same hardware configuration.
With the IBM test, they took 17 machines worth a total of $150,000, installed Red Hat and Beowulf, and started doing ray-tracing calculations. The numbers escape me, but it effectively matched the speed of a Cray YMP costing $5.5M. I consider this a good definition of "high end computing". I pity the person who wants to do this with NT, at any price.
Linux has been ready for the "buzz explosion" for some time now. Microsoft went into the DOJ trial, nad has been failing miserably. They have needed to show that there is competition, that they are not a monopoly.
I believe that tons of money got invested into Linux precisely because of the DOJ trial. Before this trial, nothing was keeping Microsoft from cutting off anybody who supported Linux.
Now that the buzz is in full explosion, MS can show the DOJ that it is competition and attack it as such. Personally, I don't care how the trial goes; the fact that it happened at all has made the difference.
Another side effect of the trial is that Microsoft is forced to spout the virtues of Linux to the courts to defend the theory that Linux is indeed a contender. They then have to turn around and tell the market that Linux is not a contender.
With some money and some lawyers, Microsoft will start finding themselves back in court--for false advertising, slander, and/or perjury. You cannot lie under oath, you cannot make false claims in advertising, so contradicting your testimony with your marketing is a criminal offense of one sort or another.
My question is, who has both the money and the motive to spend it on lawyers? Everybody seems to be investing in Red Hat, but I don't know their budgetary situation. IMHO, the best anti-FUD is to overturn said FUD in court.
The trick is to keep Microsoft fighting fair. They win when they can operate unhindered by the law. They lose when the law catches up with them.
Speak the truth. It's a novel approach in this biz, but it's the Open Source approach. When you get your favorite Linux distro, the source CD says "Here's how we did it!" There is no back-room stuff about how this stuff is put together. You get the stuff with the blueprints.
The truth is that half-hearted OSS doesn't work. OSS contributors won't contribute if they feel that they are being used, and those contributors tend to know if they are or not. Does OSS work as a post-proprietary conversion? The experiments in Netscape and Apple are still taking place. We'll tell people the truth when we figure out what it is.
Our advantage over Microsoft is that we cherish the truth, and we share it promiscuously. Never let them take that advantage away from us. The truth shall set your code free.
Microsoft, of course, is in the top five of favorite /. flame targets. IMHO, they have earned it. No situation is hopeless, and it is never too late to reform. If Microsoft wanted to, they could make themselves into the sort of company that would be respected and even praised here. It would be a long journey.
Nothing that they say can impress your average Slashdotter, simply because we are so used to the lies that they spout. Lie enough times, and you lose credibility. These are the masters of vaporware; these are the people who told us that Windows 95 no longer runs on a DOS; these are the ones stating that the open source of Linux makes it a security risk (quite the opposite; ask people in the crypto or security biz); these are the ones telling us that, with Linux, "users must manually synchronize user accounts across servers". Has anybody heard of NIS?
I don't remember who said it first, but what they do speaks so loudly that we cannot hear what they say. This holds as truly for Microsoft as for anyone. So what do they do? They ship bloatware. They ship technically incompetent software. They ship "Operating Systems" (in quotes because people don't always agree on the definition of that term) that logs its uptime in days rather than months. They put BSOD in the vernacular. And that's just their software.
Their business practices are arguably worse. They destroy the markets for their competitors (Netscape--Web Browser market). They misappropriate the licenses they purchase from other vendors to sabotage their products (Sun Microsystems--Java technology). They steal technology outright and ship it as their own (Stac--Disk compression technology, back in the DOS 6.x days). They ignore or pervert court orders (Netscape again--the "no bundling" agreement). Whether Microsoft is a monopoly depends on the defintion of that term--and the jury is literally still out on that one. However, they are undeniably a rogue corporation that operates above the law.
The sheer power of Microsoft, plus the willingness to ignore ethical or legal restrictions, and their current focus on Linux, tends to unsettle your average Linux enthusiast. When one looks at the past history of Microsoft, one must be out of one's gourd to trust them at all.
Microsoft can change all this. I think that the Linux zeal would be greatly lessened if Microsoft actually released a quality OS; one that is stable under fire, doesn't attempt to take up $1,000 of hardware by itself, and allows you to easily do the things that you bought the computer to do. I think that they couldn't enhance Windows to do that, but would have to start from scratch again. However, it could be done.
Microsoft can gain Slashdot kudos simply by not lying. Almost everybody twists the truth a little bit, revealing the stuff in their favor and covering up the stuff that isn't. This is a far cry from making provably false statements in order to fool the chumps.
Microsoft can impress us by doing the right thing. It would take a bit of doing so to show that they have truly changed their stripes, but it would be welcome here. Microsoft has long passed the point where they could impress us by talking about doing the right thing.
We're skeptical--I list some of the reasons why above. Some of us are still hopeful--stranger things have happened--but we are still skeptical. Hope doesn't mean stupidity, after all.
IIRC, Van Kempen scooped up the linux.com domain to prevent any one Linux distribution from taking the domain and thus the crown of "The One True Linux". One of the reasons he responded to the VA Research bid is because it's in VA's best financial interests to be distribution-agnostic.
IIRC, there are "freeware" versions there for personal use only. These should only use Diffie-Hellman keys rather than RSA keys (and thus be backwards-incompatible, unable to talk to PGP 4.0 and below). Using DH rather than RSA avoids the RSA patent.
Between this and GnuPG, there are now at least two vendors for legal downloads. The NAI stuff described above is sold (with RSA and other things bolted on) as payware; I can personally vouch that it is good compared to most payware. Those who know GnuPG will be able to say if GnuPG is technically better or worse.
So long as you don't say it in his prescence. If you do so, he will repeatedly infringe upon your right to free speech by interrupting you until you use his terminology. He prevents you from saying your peace with your words in his presence. Specifically, he has done this during press conferences--he wouldn't even let a reporter finish a question with the word "Linux" in it until said reporter amended it to "GNU/Linux". Politicians in debate have more respect than that.
RMS certainly has the freedom to call it GNU/Linux, and in fact to ask that we do. The way that he does it (interrupting you until you capitulate) is an abuse of free speech and an infringement on everyone else's free speech. You can correct me after I've finished, thank you.
RMS is merely stating his viewpoint that more credit should be given to the GNU project.
Interpert it that way if you wish. Literally, RMS is stating his viewpoint that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. I've heard a couple of explanations for this, but none from RMS himself.
You are insisting that HE capitulates to what YOU want to call the system that you run every day. To stridently attack someone for stating their viewpoint, as you do in this post, belies your claim to love freedom. Or perhaps its just YOUR freedom that you care about?
I am insisting upon the right to speak my dissenting viewpoint, in my own words. He has the right to tell me what he thinks I should call it. My problem with RMS in this respect (and understand that I have a lot of respect for this man otherwise) is that he will usurp the floor and hold it hostage while you have it, in order to get his words to come out of your mouth. He denies you freedom of speech. This is entirely different from complaining about it when he has the floor.
1: Microsoft does nothing remotely like Open Source. Business as usual.
2: Microsoft fully embraces Open Source and copylefts the entirety of Windows. By embracing I mean getting the mindset, and believing in it. Nothing less than Netscape's own buy-in would really count. This would take nothing less than a certifyable miracle (or heavy drugs). If this happens, a beautiful thing will happen. A fully Open Source Windows would turn into something worth running in a few years.
3: Microsoft pays lip service to Open Source and tries to fit it into their current business model. They try to embrace and extend OSS, for development gain and/or mindshare gain.
If they choose option 3, they play to their own weakness and will lose in both development cycles and mindshare.
Technically, a partial Open Source strategy for Microsoft will work about as well as those of Apple and Al Gore. They will not get any assistance from the hacker community at large.
Regarding mindshare, they will gain kudos only with those who think that Open Source is a Good Thing, but don't have a clue about what it is. I am not cynical enough to believe that there is a significant population of PHBs who meet those criteria.
We hold the advantage precisely because Open Source is so antiintuitive. If one knows a little about Open Source, one concludes that the OSS buzz is coming from certified lunatics. One has to fully grok OSS to think that it's useful. even most PHBs think that Open Source is some form of madness. Those who think that OSS is a Good Thing are, by and large, those who understand it. And they will see the problems with a half-hearted approach.
There are some that belive in the Gospel According to Bill; the term Open Source will turn from evil to wonderful the instant Microsoft "embraces" it. However, Microsoft can gain mindshare out of mindless MS zealots by releasing the Bill Gates Cardio Kickboxing workout DVD-ROM.
An IT department with that sort of a budget will find Linux to be rather useful for some applications, actually. With that size of a budget, one can make an in-house Linux support team. Having such a team and using Linux keeps you from relying on a vendor's support team. Such a team allows you to implement mission-critical bug fixes on your schedule, not that of your vendor. And believe you me, if you are big enough to have a $1B budget, time is measured in thousands of dollars per minute. Waiting a month for a bug that takes a week to fix is expensive.
If you perform an experiment to study gravity, and you get a value for g of 32 ft per second squared, you don't go looking for what you did wrong--other experiments show this result as well. If you find that g=14 feet per second squared, you start analyzing the experiment rather than rewriting the physics texts.
In the Real World, Linux appears to outperform NT. In most benchmarks, Linux solutions appear to outperform NT solutions. Two Microsoft organs create benchmarks, and the NT solution outperforms the Linux solution.
We look for holes in the benchmarks because we smell a rat. We've found a rat or N--some big ones.
What we have learned is that benchmarks can be easily cooked. If someone with a vested interest controls enough variables, one can create a pathological case where one's interests win.
If it wasn't a cooked test, there would still be people yelling. This is not a good thing. However, this is a cooked test. Linux can beat NT in a lot of ways, including performance-wise. Linux isn't strong enough to beat NT with one arm tied behind its back, especially when Microsoft chooses the arm.
OTOH, anybody know how well NT does at ray-tracing? IBM had some fun with Linux and ray-tracing a while back...
Actually, the nice thing is that Linux already solves the problem that the original Magi triad had. Besides the inherent virus protection, the sheer number of daemons running around your average Linux box should be sufficient to defeat any attacking Angels.
And don't get into a huff about Absolute Terror fields, either. Linux holds its own against Microsoft's AT field (well, what better description for FUD than Absolute Terror?).