At the LL1 page they define a lightweight language as one which is easy to learn.
Following the analogy of heavyweight vs lightweight threads, I initially thought it would be about languages which are either very small once compiled, or that have simple interpreters.
Copper conducts heat pretty well, and is cheap. Yes, it does conduct
electricity, but that's not necessarily a problem. You just need to
coat all the surfaces touching the computer with thermal compound.
The bigger problem is molding it to fit the internals of the computer
without exposing the motherboard to the temperature of liquid copper.
Perhaps just get blocks of it which you weld together or something.
The only real advantage of the Crusoe for low-power devices is x86
compatibility. If you're not intending to run (non-CE) Windows, it
doesn't make much sense. Strong ARM goes almost as fast with
considerably less power consumption.
If these boxes weren't so heavy and pricey, they'd make nice linux
boxes.
Like so many other companies, VA Linux Systems has found that in order
to remain competitive, it must dump its revenue sources (hardware
sales) in attempts to reduce expenditures. In the short run, this
means VA Linux will lose much more money per year, but in the long
run, they're hoping to keep their losses to a minimum by replacing all
of their functions with Cowboy Neal (as various scientific polls have
demonstrated possible).
This is not the case. The FSF doesn't object (to the legality) of running nonfree software on HURD, which is also GPL licensed, with no exceptions. The syscall interface, which is what applications (indirectly) use, has been understood not to GPL-infect other software.
The Linus-exception is the module interface. He claims that running binary kernel modules without source is acceptable (with some possible unclear exceptions). However, nearly every time someone mentions this, Alan Cox rings in saying that he has copyright on much of Linux and doesn't think binary modules are legal.
There has yet to be a slugfest in court, but who knows...
And I do think that Tom Christensen does have a point when he argues that the distinction between syscall/pipe and dynamic linking is rather arbitrary, but that's for another discussion...
Gates likes public domain/BSD/XFree-licensed software, because that means he can incorporate the code in his own products. He likes commercial software because it's usually owned by one company which he can buy.
He doesn't like GNU GPL software because there's often no clear way for him to have it.
Gates views commercial software as the real software, and Free Software as other stuff. People developing commercial software contributes to what he views as important. People developing BSDish software also contributes, because their can be proprietarized.
Copyleft software isn't competing on the same grounds as the others. It is rarely commercialized in the same sense as non-copyleft software (exceptions Qt, etc.). It will change the nature of the software business, and Gates will use FUD and.NET as much as he needs to avert this end.
A couple days ago I compiled a PPC kernel for the first time (having
previously only done x86 kernels). Without reading the documentation
and not really knowing the names for everything in my computer, I
guessed a bit. I compiled and rebooted, expecting kernel panics or
worse. But no, everything worked perfectly. Where's the fun in that?
Also see DeCSS as music:
on
Protein Music
·
· Score: 1
The idea of encoding information as music isn't a new one. Unfortunately most attempts don't attempt to convey any of the original meaning in the new music.
This arguably prevents someone from making a
fair use of GPL'd code (for example, by taking a small line of code and incorporating it into a million line program which is part of a doctoral thesis). However, by entering into the GPL, the licensee possibly waives her right to make any such fair use.
The GNU GPL is an optional contract -- you can make fair use of the code without accepting its terms. Therefore, I can always take a small line of code from a GPL'd program without worry.
The answer being requested was whether shrink wrapping is/should be a valid way of entering a contract. IMHO, it shouldn't, especially for things where it says "By opening this box you agree to the terms inside." I can't give consent to something I can't see.
If I buy your software and you're not satisfied with the normal licensing terms you get by default under copyright, you should require me to sign and mail you an actual contract.
I'm suspicious of that claim in NikkeiBP. Note that the RSA press release is entirely reasonable, and doesn't discuss piracy but privacy. Presumeably of credit card numbers and the other things SSL is typically used for.
If one of the intents really is to prevent unauthorized copying, I'm surprised RSA has signed on to this, as they're normally a fairly non-bogus company.
Your teachers in kindergarten lied to you about the primary colors,
you know, and this article makes the same mistake. Red can be formed
by mixing magenta and yellow. Blue is formed by mixing cyan and
magenta.
I stil haven't figured out why this injustice is allowed to continue,
corrupting the values of our children. It probably has something to
do with the easter bunny.
%%Title: Copyright (C) 2000 Alan Cox On A Chip, Inc.
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%%Pages: 6
%%PageOrder: Ascending
%%Page: 1
showpage
%%Page: 2
showpage
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showpage
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showpage
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GNOME Foundation helping KDE
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 2
Acknowledging that industry backing of the GNOME Foundation was a factor in the decision to GPL Qt, Eng said internal debate on the issue began in May and accelerated in the middle of June
As some people had predicted, the formation of the GNOME Foundation is having more of an effect on KDE than the KDE leaders had claimed possible.
Since Qt 2.2 should be compatible with KDE 2.0, I'll be checking it out in a couple days. Didn't like KDE 1.0 much, but I didn't like GNOME 1.0 much either.
Well, back in the days of static linking things were a lot clearer since you had a single binary which contained both the GNU GPLed work and Qt, so the binary was obviously a derivative of the two. Lawyers argue that since dynamically linking essentially does the same thing but without needing the two to be directly joined on the filesystem, it should still be considered a derivative work. I agree that this seems slightly fishy and inconsistent, but to me, so does the whole of Section 17 of US code. It's not just Debian's interpretation. Even TrollTech interprets it this way (they put their various restrictions on software you dynamically link with Qt Free Edition, which only derivative work clauses of copyright allow them to do). Their whole business is based on this premise.
It's quite probable that a judge might decide that the gain to society of allowing your ftp site carry a bunch of "random" data is outweighed by the claimed economic losses of the MPAA and friends.
Not that I would agree with him, and I'm not a lawyer, but reading over the DeCSS injunctions and the copyright clauses it seems law contains many questions of "relative harm."
If judges accept banning linking to things which theoretically might lead to copyright infringement, banning you from hosting random data without some obvious purpose doesn't seem so far fetched. Of course, you're more likely to just see injunctions against you distributing the data and not monetary damages (unless they can prove you acted in concert with your sister site carrying complementary data), but this doesn't help that much.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The GPL puts restrictions on distribution of derivative works made from programs. Under current interpretation of copyright law, linking is considered making a derivative work. The GPL says that you must have the same freedoms to modify the source of everything in the derivative work as you do under the GPL. If the derivative work contains Qt (and copyright law interpretation says it does), then you can't distribute the resulting binary since the QPL puts rather large restrictions on modifying Qt.
If you don't believe me, read both licenses. If you still don't believe me, I'll quote the appropriate sections of each.
The plaintiff would be someone like me who wrote a GPLed application which someone was going to make a Qt port of until I persuaded him his efforts would be better spent making a GTK port. If the hypothetical Qt port was included in Redhat, I could sue Redhat for not providing freely modifiable sources to the distributed derivative (a binary linked to Qt) of my work. I'd only ask $1 + attorney fees, but US law allows for larger amounts even if there were no actual damages, provided I've registered my copyright with the government.
The above is not a purely hypothetical discussion. Corel linked Debian's libapt against Qt without permission and only avoided a lawsuit because the libapt author was really nice. Various KDE (non-core) components are derivatives of other works not authored by the KDE team, and they know they don't have permission for it all.
I agree that the world would be a better place without so many lawsuits and dealing with licenses, but until copyright dies (which I'm confident it will within my lifetime), this is how the world is.
Really, the problem is with RedHat, SUSE, and Corel (and other distros) knowingly illegally distributing KDE binaries. And since KDE 2.0 (using Qt 2.x with QPL) isn't quite finished yet, there isn't currently even any room to argue over subtleties of the licenses.
The common corporate stance of "Yes, we know we're breaking the GNU GPL, but maybe we'll fix it in a few years" really surprises me (see nVidia et al). If they were including unlicensed copies of W2K (for use with VMWare) in their distros, they'd issue a recall on them the minute Microsoft called them up. When it's the license of the community that they break, they don't care because there's no immanent danger of a lawsuit.
Of course, most of the people whose code is linked against Qt without permission don't care anyway, but would at least like to have been asked.
This device (and most of biometrics) is a fraud and merely security through obscurity. Once someone figures out how the card works, then it should be fairly trivial to build a device which opens the card up and grabs your public and private keys.
With PGP and GPG, there's a passphrase to prevent having physical access to the device instantly revealing the private key. You can't really do this with fingerprints (or other biometrics) since the fingerprint cannot be used as a key. The digital image of your fingerprint varies from impression to impression so the device has to ask itself "is this close enough to Alice's finger?" instead of using it as a key.
Even if they could use the fingerprint as a key (perhaps some abstract description of the fingerprint which doesn't vary much), then all you need is a sample of the fingerprint which is fairly easy to obtain. It doesn't even need to be off a live finger - any tests in the device for heat or circulating blood can be bypassed since they can exist only as physical prevention mechanisms, not mathematical mechanisms.
The only really legitimate use of biometrics is if you have secured hardware with trusted guards (i.e., real people) watching that you don't mess with the hardware and that you really are presenting your actual finger or retina. And even this shouldn't be trusted for very important things unless you have several guards at each machine, all resistant to bribes.
Biometrics on a card would prevent only very unsophisticated attacks from people unfamiliar with the cards. If your attackers won't have physical access to your card, then using PGP or GPG without a passphrase is just as secure and more convenient.
The Time-Warner response likens CSS to the scrambling of cable signals. In this capacity, for only prohibitting things like digital versions of fscktv, I don't feel it strongly infringes on my freedom.
They claim they're just like the cable companies; that they're preventing access only to people who haven't paid for a work, which is simply not true.
From item 5 of the text:
4. I am aware of no works or classes of works that have, because of the implementation of technical protection measures, become less available to persons who desire to be lawful users. On the contrary, the implementation of such measures has, as explained in our response to question 3 above, made works more available.
The referenced item 3 basically says that lawful users now have convenient access to more works, but ignores the fact that they have less access to these works. Certainly by not being able to view DVDs on GNU/Linux systems because of the technical protection measures, these works are less available to us, especially if VHS fades behind the growth of DVDs.
Indeed, copyright often proports to exist to give corpor^H^H^H^H^H^Hauthors safety in releasing their works. Time-Warner argues that by giving authors more control they will be more willing to continue releasing their works. How many works have not been done soley because of fears of copying, fears that they'll only make $300 million off the latest movie instead of $310 million? That they might have less money to make the next movie doesn't factor into whether they're willing to release an individual movie.
Any law against actions which aren't easily detectable and don't direct damage anyone are hard to enforce. Copyright is no exception. It takes a police state to do this. Just because infringement has become easier and more undetectable doesn't mean we should start throwing away our fair use rights.
The DMCA allows reverse engineering of a playback device. It doesn't allow making something which decrypts non-programs without the approval of the copyright owner.
Thus, even if the Xing player had been encrypted properly, the DMCA wouldn't prohibit breaking the encryption of the player.
In this case, there playstation programs weren't scrambled, so there's no DMCA involved.
Slashdot Mirror
At the LL1 page they define a lightweight language as one which is easy to learn.
Following the analogy of heavyweight vs lightweight threads, I initially thought it would be about languages which are either very small once compiled, or that have simple interpreters.
But who am I to question some guys at MIT?
The bigger problem is molding it to fit the internals of the computer without exposing the motherboard to the temperature of liquid copper. Perhaps just get blocks of it which you weld together or something.
If these boxes weren't so heavy and pricey, they'd make nice linux boxes.
I think you're thinking of the templates in C++. www.annexia.org/freeware/cpptemplates/.
Like so many other companies, VA Linux Systems has found that in order to remain competitive, it must dump its revenue sources (hardware sales) in attempts to reduce expenditures. In the short run, this means VA Linux will lose much more money per year, but in the long run, they're hoping to keep their losses to a minimum by replacing all of their functions with Cowboy Neal (as various scientific polls have demonstrated possible).
This is not the case. The FSF doesn't object (to the legality) of running nonfree software on HURD, which is also GPL licensed, with no exceptions. The syscall interface, which is what applications (indirectly) use, has been understood not to GPL-infect other software.
The Linus-exception is the module interface. He claims that running binary kernel modules without source is acceptable (with some possible unclear exceptions). However, nearly every time someone mentions this, Alan Cox rings in saying that he has copyright on much of Linux and doesn't think binary modules are legal.
There has yet to be a slugfest in court, but who knows...
And I do think that Tom Christensen does have a point when he argues that the distinction between syscall/pipe and dynamic linking is rather arbitrary, but that's for another discussion...
Gates likes public domain/BSD/XFree-licensed software, because that means he can incorporate the code in his own products. He likes commercial software because it's usually owned by one company which he can buy.
He doesn't like GNU GPL software because there's often no clear way for him to have it.
Gates views commercial software as the real software, and Free Software as other stuff. People developing commercial software contributes to what he views as important. People developing BSDish software also contributes, because their can be proprietarized.
Copyleft software isn't competing on the same grounds as the others. It is rarely commercialized in the same sense as non-copyleft software (exceptions Qt, etc.). It will change the nature of the software business, and Gates will use FUD and .NET as much as he needs to avert this end.
A couple days ago I compiled a PPC kernel for the first time (having previously only done x86 kernels). Without reading the documentation and not really knowing the names for everything in my computer, I guessed a bit. I compiled and rebooted, expecting kernel panics or worse. But no, everything worked perfectly. Where's the fun in that?
Here's DeCSS as music: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/Castleman /css_descramble.mid.
In response to the shrink-wrap question, he said:
The GNU GPL is an optional contract -- you can make fair use of the code without accepting its terms. Therefore, I can always take a small line of code from a GPL'd program without worry.
The answer being requested was whether shrink wrapping is/should be a valid way of entering a contract. IMHO, it shouldn't, especially for things where it says "By opening this box you agree to the terms inside." I can't give consent to something I can't see.
If I buy your software and you're not satisfied with the normal licensing terms you get by default under copyright, you should require me to sign and mail you an actual contract.
I'm suspicious of that claim in NikkeiBP. Note that the RSA press release is entirely reasonable, and doesn't discuss piracy but privacy. Presumeably of credit card numbers and the other things SSL is typically used for.
If one of the intents really is to prevent unauthorized copying, I'm surprised RSA has signed on to this, as they're normally a fairly non-bogus company.
If you want the benefits of ECN but still need to connect to sites behind broken routers/firewalls, you can temporarily switch it off:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
And then a 1 to turn it back on again. No need for a reboot.
Your teachers in kindergarten lied to you about the primary colors, you know, and this article makes the same mistake. Red can be formed by mixing magenta and yellow. Blue is formed by mixing cyan and magenta.
I stil haven't figured out why this injustice is allowed to continue, corrupting the values of our children. It probably has something to do with the easter bunny.
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Creator: Alan Cox AI
%%Title: Copyright (C) 2000 Alan Cox On A Chip, Inc.
%%Rot13: Vg'f n "juvgr" cncre... trg vg?
%%Pages: 6
%%PageOrder: Ascending
%%Page: 1
showpage
%%Page: 2
showpage
%%Page: 3
showpage
%%Page: 4
showpage
%%Page: 5
showpage
%%Page: 6
showpage
As some people had predicted, the formation of the GNOME Foundation is having more of an effect on KDE than the KDE leaders had claimed possible.
Since Qt 2.2 should be compatible with KDE 2.0, I'll be checking it out in a couple days. Didn't like KDE 1.0 much, but I didn't like GNOME 1.0 much either.
Well, back in the days of static linking things were a lot clearer since you had a single binary which contained both the GNU GPLed work and Qt, so the binary was obviously a derivative of the two. Lawyers argue that since dynamically linking essentially does the same thing but without needing the two to be directly joined on the filesystem, it should still be considered a derivative work. I agree that this seems slightly fishy and inconsistent, but to me, so does the whole of Section 17 of US code. It's not just Debian's interpretation. Even TrollTech interprets it this way (they put their various restrictions on software you dynamically link with Qt Free Edition, which only derivative work clauses of copyright allow them to do). Their whole business is based on this premise.
It's quite probable that a judge might decide that the gain to society of allowing your ftp site carry a bunch of "random" data is outweighed by the claimed economic losses of the MPAA and friends.
Not that I would agree with him, and I'm not a lawyer, but reading over the DeCSS injunctions and the copyright clauses it seems law contains many questions of "relative harm."
If judges accept banning linking to things which theoretically might lead to copyright infringement, banning you from hosting random data without some obvious purpose doesn't seem so far fetched. Of course, you're more likely to just see injunctions against you distributing the data and not monetary damages (unless they can prove you acted in concert with your sister site carrying complementary data), but this doesn't help that much.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The GPL puts restrictions on distribution of derivative works made from programs. Under current interpretation of copyright law, linking is considered making a derivative work. The GPL says that you must have the same freedoms to modify the source of everything in the derivative work as you do under the GPL. If the derivative work contains Qt (and copyright law interpretation says it does), then you can't distribute the resulting binary since the QPL puts rather large restrictions on modifying Qt.
If you don't believe me, read both licenses. If you still don't believe me, I'll quote the appropriate sections of each.
The plaintiff would be someone like me who wrote a GPLed application which someone was going to make a Qt port of until I persuaded him his efforts would be better spent making a GTK port. If the hypothetical Qt port was included in Redhat, I could sue Redhat for not providing freely modifiable sources to the distributed derivative (a binary linked to Qt) of my work. I'd only ask $1 + attorney fees, but US law allows for larger amounts even if there were no actual damages, provided I've registered my copyright with the government.
The above is not a purely hypothetical discussion. Corel linked Debian's libapt against Qt without permission and only avoided a lawsuit because the libapt author was really nice. Various KDE (non-core) components are derivatives of other works not authored by the KDE team, and they know they don't have permission for it all.
I agree that the world would be a better place without so many lawsuits and dealing with licenses, but until copyright dies (which I'm confident it will within my lifetime), this is how the world is.
Really, the problem is with RedHat, SUSE, and Corel (and other distros) knowingly illegally distributing KDE binaries. And since KDE 2.0 (using Qt 2.x with QPL) isn't quite finished yet, there isn't currently even any room to argue over subtleties of the licenses.
The common corporate stance of "Yes, we know we're breaking the GNU GPL, but maybe we'll fix it in a few years" really surprises me (see nVidia et al). If they were including unlicensed copies of W2K (for use with VMWare) in their distros, they'd issue a recall on them the minute Microsoft called them up. When it's the license of the community that they break, they don't care because there's no immanent danger of a lawsuit.
Of course, most of the people whose code is linked against Qt without permission don't care anyway, but would at least like to have been asked.
This device (and most of biometrics) is a fraud and merely security through obscurity. Once someone figures out how the card works, then it should be fairly trivial to build a device which opens the card up and grabs your public and private keys.
With PGP and GPG, there's a passphrase to prevent having physical access to the device instantly revealing the private key. You can't really do this with fingerprints (or other biometrics) since the fingerprint cannot be used as a key. The digital image of your fingerprint varies from impression to impression so the device has to ask itself "is this close enough to Alice's finger?" instead of using it as a key.
Even if they could use the fingerprint as a key (perhaps some abstract description of the fingerprint which doesn't vary much), then all you need is a sample of the fingerprint which is fairly easy to obtain. It doesn't even need to be off a live finger - any tests in the device for heat or circulating blood can be bypassed since they can exist only as physical prevention mechanisms, not mathematical mechanisms.
The only really legitimate use of biometrics is if you have secured hardware with trusted guards (i.e., real people) watching that you don't mess with the hardware and that you really are presenting your actual finger or retina. And even this shouldn't be trusted for very important things unless you have several guards at each machine, all resistant to bribes.
Biometrics on a card would prevent only very unsophisticated attacks from people unfamiliar with the cards. If your attackers won't have physical access to your card, then using PGP or GPG without a passphrase is just as secure and more convenient.
Read Bruce Schneier's take on biometrics here.
Check out http://people.redhat.com/mingo/raid-pa tches/ and get raid-2.2.15-A0
The Time-Warner response likens CSS to the scrambling of cable signals. In this capacity, for only prohibitting things like digital versions of fscktv, I don't feel it strongly infringes on my freedom.
They claim they're just like the cable companies; that they're preventing access only to people who haven't paid for a work, which is simply not true.
From item 5 of the text:
The referenced item 3 basically says that lawful users now have convenient access to more works, but ignores the fact that they have less access to these works. Certainly by not being able to view DVDs on GNU/Linux systems because of the technical protection measures, these works are less available to us, especially if VHS fades behind the growth of DVDs.
Indeed, copyright often proports to exist to give corpor^H^H^H^H^H^Hauthors safety in releasing their works. Time-Warner argues that by giving authors more control they will be more willing to continue releasing their works. How many works have not been done soley because of fears of copying, fears that they'll only make $300 million off the latest movie instead of $310 million? That they might have less money to make the next movie doesn't factor into whether they're willing to release an individual movie.
Any law against actions which aren't easily detectable and don't direct damage anyone are hard to enforce. Copyright is no exception. It takes a police state to do this. Just because infringement has become easier and more undetectable doesn't mean we should start throwing away our fair use rights.
char win2k_source[30000000];
char debug(int bugcount)
{
char f;
char *p = strstr(win2k_source, "bsod();");
pass_around(p);
if(!p) {
bsod();
return '!';
}
strncpy(p, "complain_user_error();");
*((int *) &f) = bugcount--;
if(!bugcount)
return f;
return debug(bugcount);
}
The DMCA allows reverse engineering of a playback device. It doesn't allow making something which decrypts non-programs without the approval of the copyright owner.
Thus, even if the Xing player had been encrypted properly, the DMCA wouldn't prohibit breaking the encryption of the player.
In this case, there playstation programs weren't scrambled, so there's no DMCA involved.