Not because the company won't pay, but because the damn things WORK.
I worked in computer sales for a few years, and I had one customer that lived out on a farm, and his house was hit by lightning at least once per year.. when he bought his computer from me, I sold him a TripLite surge supressor (it had one of those $25,000 guarantees)..
When spring rolled around, he brought the surge supressor in to us - he said that his house had been hit the previous night.. among other things, the lightning toasted his microwave, and every light bulb in his house had exploded..
The supressor smelled like smoke, rattled when you shook it, and had what looked like "blast marks" coming out of it.. he said that his computer was on when the strike hit, and when the storm was over, the computer still worked..
We exchanged the supressor for a new one (it had a lifetime warranty, which was covered by the lightning strike) and he went on his way.. he said that this was the best $100 he'd ever spent..
For everyone here who's slagging Compaq, why don't you guys go get a REAL Compaq (like a Deskpro) and then tell me what you think.. if all you've had to deal with is a Presario, your opinion is flawed, because you've never seen what they can really do..
I LOVE my Deskpro's - they're completely SILENT - as in NO noise.. they're easy to upgrade.. I can open it up, and install a new CD ROM, or HD, or any expansion card in 5 seconds, without the need for a screwdriver. It's like working with a Formula 1..
Presarios are consumer-level crap - pretty much disposable.. if that's all you've ever seen, you'll surely be disapponted.. but open your mind and see that there is more to Compaq than the Presario..
I don't think that "A main router went down, and we're too cheap to invest in failover." counts as an Act of God.
Yes, floods, etc count, but I don't see anything like that mentioned by Rogers.
As a disclaimer, I work for an ISP too - so I can sympathize with you about things that are really out of your control - but equipment failure doesn't cut it.
According to the cableco, they can't be held liable because their AUP says so..
This sound suspiciously like a "click-through" license.. if the Judge wins, it could spark a HUGE blow against such licenses - finally (at least in Canada) bringing them under legal scrutiny..
I'd be interested in seeing how this plays out.. a legal precident could be in the makings...
no matter how rich someone is, that they could ever "purchase" the rights to GPL'ed software
Umm, can you tell me why not?
I write GPL'ed software - if MS came to me and said "I want to buy your software for $20,000,000" I'd say "Sure!", and then give them all my code.
Now, if other people have contributed to the project, the MS would have to go to them and negotiate to use their software as well.. (because they still own copyright on their own software.)
MS would then able to take it and do whatever the hell they want with it.. (including selling it under a proprietary license.) They would also NOT be subject to the GPL (because they would own the code.)
Now for the kicker this is done no differently than buying other proprietary code. Most off-the-shelf software produced by big companies licenses code from other companies - don't believe me? load up Netscape, and type "about:" into the URL bar..
he... can't brush it under the carpet
Now THIS is true - he can't put the Genie back in the bottle.. just like in my code purchasing example, it wouldn't stop someone else from working on the GPL'ed work.. but saying that he couldn't buy it just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the GPL.
A thorough investigation of the Bible will reveal that there is no prohibition against these words, especially in English.
You're right - but the (mis?)conception that the "Seven Dirty Words" are bad doesn't come from the bible - it comes from Queen Victoria..
You remember her, right? The Ultra-Prude that decided that dogs had to wear skirts, and that piano legs had to be covered because they were too suggestive?
Since most North American was founded by the British, they're saddled with this legacy.. the problem is that they're so far away from the rest of Europe (who generally isn't saddled with such backwards concepts) that they aren't influenced by the more free societies.. (unlike in Britain, where the concept of sex being "dirty" has softened since Vickie's rule.)
Disclaimer: I am a British Citizen, and I fully support the Monarchy (and I even like some of them!)
the only licensing charges for the MP3 codec will apply to people profiting from MP3 streaming, I imagine most of the slashdot community will be free to use it as they wish without paying a dime
Until you realize that what Thompson considers "profit" and what you consider "profit" are two entirely separate things.
When Thompson tried enforcing the patent licenses on encoding software, they went after quite a few free (as in beer) programmers - their logic was "You are making money from your software because you have banner ads on the download site." (this is how LAME came about.)
So I wouldn't put it past them to say "Hey, you're streaming MP3's, and you have a banner ad there - so therefore you're making a profit."
his license only ever allowed "redistribution" and "use", not "modification".
How do you define "Use"?
If someone gives me source code, and says that I have license to "use" it - to me, that means that I have the right to modify it, because that's one of the ways to use source code.
Really, what's the point of giving someone source code if they're not allowed to modify it? (I guess the answer is to ask MS:o)
There are many ways to "use" source code. Modifying it is one of them. Mr. Reed should have been more explicit in his original license (perhaps he should have contacted a lawyer.)
For CO2 pollution, this is a huge step forward - because the net amount you're putting into the environment is Zero. (not counting processing costs, of course)
The problem with burning oil (and coal) is that you're taking carbon from inside the earth, where it's reasonably inert (has no effect on the environment) and putting it into the air (in the form of CO2)..
The carbon from plant matter originally came from the air - so when you burn it, you're just recycling it - putting it back where it came from..
link closed source code with a GPL'ed DLL, that's legal.
It's legal depending on the situation
Suppose you write an image viewer library, and released it under GPL... (remember, this is a library, not an app)..
Then someone comes along and takes your library, makes a windows wrapper around it - their program does nothing except provide a user-level interface to your program.. then they release the whole shebang as "Superviewer", selling it for $50.00.. how would you feel?
According to the spirit (and letter) of the GPL, they are in violation.
I play it a few minutes, then give all the mana/rejuv. potions to my Sorc..:o)
It's also fun to meet a new Sorc and give them craploads of mana - the reaction is fun..
FWIW, I do this because I _HATE_ the fact that you can't buy mana potions.. My level 35 sorc continually runs out, even with warmth at level 18 and a helm with two perfect skulls..
Blizzard may be able to say "you can't buy it" - but they can't stop me from giving it away:o)
Quoting the quarter mile of other vehicles is like comparing apples to oranges.
If you knew how a turbine worked, you'd know that it doesn't accelerate like a 'normal' engine - with a turbine, the faster you are going, the faster you accelerate - so it accelerates slowly from the start..
Comparing the low-end acceleration of a turbine to an internal combustion engine just makes you look foolish.
After reading this article (and the others on the same topic) there seems to be something missing.. MS is attacking the GPL, but why? They can say 'Linux' specifically, but (as Alan Cox pointed out) why would they urge others to not use the GPL?
The general consensus is that they're scared of something they can't compete with, but I think that's a little short sighted..
It dawned on me while reading this article, that MS is urging against the GPL, not because they're scared of competition, but because they can't own a GPL'ed product..
I think that if MS was the only software company that provided non-GPL software (as in the unlikely event that every other company on earth suddenly GPL'ed their products..) from a competition standpoint, MS wouldn't really care - from what I've seen, they don't care about competing with other companies...
It's well known that MS rarely (ever?) invents anything themselves - most of their 'R&D' consists of buying other people's technologies.. Just think about what a GPL'ed world would do to them: unable to 'innovate', they'd be forced to come up with new technologies themselves!
I think that this is what really has MS running scared.. each of their competitors that embraces the GPL means one less corporate aquisition.. and that scares them more than anything else in the world..
Linux, by extension of this, is their worst nightmare - a technology that they can't own.
SSH is a good protocol for secure terminal sessions, but you should never, never use it for tunneling, unless you're fond of session-timeouts and stalled connections.
SSH uses TCP, which means it's the worst protocol you can use for a tunnel... TCP guarantees the reliability of the connection - so a dropped packet can wreak havok.. the tunnel will stop and re-transmit the packet - so every other TCP connection will stall - and guess what? These stalled connections think their packets have been lost, so they retransmit their 'lost' packets - resulting in LOTS of duplicat packets.. (and if the 'original' packet was lost due to congestion, you can guess that you're gonna start flooding the tunnel - a cascade failure.)
Unless you can guarantee that your network will never drop a packet, you need to use an unreliable protocol for the tunnel (think GRE - that's what it was designed for - but even UDP would be a better choice.)
What you're missing is that the machine that's doing the checksumming isn't necessarily the same machine that's viewing the page.
If the machine that's doing the checking is on a nice, big, fat pipe - it can check a page regularly (very quickly) - then send a notification to the user, who may be on a slow (dialup) link... this way the user doesn't have to keep visiting a page (they just wait for the change notification)
Yeah- this is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" things
No, it isn't.
but I have yet to hear of a web cache or proxy that uses md5sums instead of last-modified headers- are there any out there?
No, because that's a completely different question.
Just FYI, this has been going on for _ages_ There was a 'web page change detector' available back in my 14.4kbps modem days (early 1995 - I can't remember what it was called, tho - been too damn long) that used this very technique... you fed a URL into a CGI, and it would poll the page every so often and email you if it had changed. And guess what? It used a checksum of the page to determine if it had changed (since storing all those pages would just take way too much storage space.)
I doubt United Features Syndicate would want Peanuts strips easily travelling, and then being searched, on the web
United Media may not want that, but the other major comic syndicate (United Express, IIRC) seems to have a good attitude about it...
Both syndicates have always had 'one month' of each strip available - but last year the Uexpress website (www.uexpress.com) made a drastic change..
Last November, they put all of their comics online in a 'back issue' format.. instead of only showing one month of strips, you can go back all the way to 1996 (or whenever their website started carrying the strip - Duplex goes back to August of 96) - Calvin and Hobbes is being carried in its' entirety (more or less, they are revealing one at a time - offset by 11 years of the original strip date, so today's strip is from April 18, 1990; but it starts at November 17, 1985)
Contrast this with BC or Meg, which are so paranoid, they obfusicate the strip filename in a lame attempt to prevent someone from using a robot to download the strip.
You may not be able to get dilbert or Peanuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if Uexpress.com indexed their comics like this.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to see someone claim that money :-)
That won't happen..
Not because the company won't pay, but because the damn things WORK.
I worked in computer sales for a few years, and I had one customer that lived out on a farm, and his house was hit by lightning at least once per year.. when he bought his computer from me, I sold him a TripLite surge supressor (it had one of those $25,000 guarantees)..
When spring rolled around, he brought the surge supressor in to us - he said that his house had been hit the previous night.. among other things, the lightning toasted his microwave, and every light bulb in his house had exploded..
The supressor smelled like smoke, rattled when you shook it, and had what looked like "blast marks" coming out of it.. he said that his computer was on when the strike hit, and when the storm was over, the computer still worked..
We exchanged the supressor for a new one (it had a lifetime warranty, which was covered by the lightning strike) and he went on his way.. he said that this was the best $100 he'd ever spent..
I see a lot of "I hate Compaq" posts..
For everyone here who's slagging Compaq, why don't you guys go get a REAL Compaq (like a Deskpro) and then tell me what you think.. if all you've had to deal with is a Presario, your opinion is flawed, because you've never seen what they can really do..
I LOVE my Deskpro's - they're completely SILENT - as in NO noise.. they're easy to upgrade.. I can open it up, and install a new CD ROM, or HD, or any expansion card in 5 seconds, without the need for a screwdriver. It's like working with a Formula 1..
Presarios are consumer-level crap - pretty much disposable.. if that's all you've ever seen, you'll surely be disapponted.. but open your mind and see that there is more to Compaq than the Presario..
I don't think that "A main router went down, and we're too cheap to invest in failover." counts as an Act of God.
Yes, floods, etc count, but I don't see anything like that mentioned by Rogers.
As a disclaimer, I work for an ISP too - so I can sympathize with you about things that are really out of your control - but equipment failure doesn't cut it.
This could be interesting..
According to the cableco, they can't be held liable because their AUP says so..
This sound suspiciously like a "click-through" license.. if the Judge wins, it could spark a HUGE blow against such licenses - finally (at least in Canada) bringing them under legal scrutiny..
I'd be interested in seeing how this plays out.. a legal precident could be in the makings...
anything to get 1.21 GW
:o)
I dunno about that.. in the movie, they say you need 1.21 Jigga-Watts, not 1.21 Gigawatts.
Although why they needed lightning to do that is beyond me.. when I want 1.21 Jigga-Watts, I just head down to the local Hooters
no matter how rich someone is, that they could ever "purchase" the rights to GPL'ed software
... can't brush it under the carpet
Umm, can you tell me why not?
I write GPL'ed software - if MS came to me and said "I want to buy your software for $20,000,000" I'd say "Sure!", and then give them all my code.
Now, if other people have contributed to the project, the MS would have to go to them and negotiate to use their software as well.. (because they still own copyright on their own software.)
MS would then able to take it and do whatever the hell they want with it.. (including selling it under a proprietary license.) They would also NOT be subject to the GPL (because they would own the code.)
Now for the kicker this is done no differently than buying other proprietary code. Most off-the-shelf software produced by big companies licenses code from other companies - don't believe me? load up Netscape, and type "about:" into the URL bar..
he
Now THIS is true - he can't put the Genie back in the bottle.. just like in my code purchasing example, it wouldn't stop someone else from working on the GPL'ed work.. but saying that he couldn't buy it just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the GPL.
A thorough investigation of the Bible will reveal that there is no prohibition against these words, especially in English.
You're right - but the (mis?)conception that the "Seven Dirty Words" are bad doesn't come from the bible - it comes from Queen Victoria..
You remember her, right? The Ultra-Prude that decided that dogs had to wear skirts, and that piano legs had to be covered because they were too suggestive?
Since most North American was founded by the British, they're saddled with this legacy.. the problem is that they're so far away from the rest of Europe (who generally isn't saddled with such backwards concepts) that they aren't influenced by the more free societies.. (unlike in Britain, where the concept of sex being "dirty" has softened since Vickie's rule.)
Disclaimer: I am a British Citizen, and I fully support the Monarchy (and I even like some of them!)
the only licensing charges for the MP3 codec will apply to people profiting from MP3 streaming, I imagine most of the slashdot community will be free to use it as they wish without paying a dime
Until you realize that what Thompson considers "profit" and what you consider "profit" are two entirely separate things.
When Thompson tried enforcing the patent licenses on encoding software, they went after quite a few free (as in beer) programmers - their logic was "You are making money from your software because you have banner ads on the download site." (this is how LAME came about.)
So I wouldn't put it past them to say "Hey, you're streaming MP3's, and you have a banner ad there - so therefore you're making a profit."
This will come to pass.. just watch and see.
An equilateral triangle 2' on a side uses less material than a circle 2' in diameter.
:o)
Yeah, but there's no way you'd get a 250 pound drainage worker to fit through it
Nahh.. more like having David Duke as keynote speaker at an NAACP meeting.
I think Darren is right: there is no change.
:o)
I disagree.
his license only ever allowed "redistribution" and "use", not "modification".
How do you define "Use"?
If someone gives me source code, and says that I have license to "use" it - to me, that means that I have the right to modify it, because that's one of the ways to use source code.
Really, what's the point of giving someone source code if they're not allowed to modify it? (I guess the answer is to ask MS
There are many ways to "use" source code. Modifying it is one of them. Mr. Reed should have been more explicit in his original license (perhaps he should have contacted a lawyer.)
For CO2 pollution, this is a huge step forward - because the net amount you're putting into the environment is Zero. (not counting processing costs, of course)
The problem with burning oil (and coal) is that you're taking carbon from inside the earth, where it's reasonably inert (has no effect on the environment) and putting it into the air (in the form of CO2)..
The carbon from plant matter originally came from the air - so when you burn it, you're just recycling it - putting it back where it came from..
This is a very good thing..
Contact their ISP
If that doesn't fix it, contact MAPS - I'm sure their ISP will contact them on your behalf if they get threatened with the RBL.
link closed source code with a GPL'ed DLL, that's legal.
It's legal depending on the situation
Suppose you write an image viewer library, and released it under GPL... (remember, this is a library, not an app)..
Then someone comes along and takes your library, makes a windows wrapper around it - their program does nothing except provide a user-level interface to your program.. then they release the whole shebang as "Superviewer", selling it for $50.00.. how would you feel?
According to the spirit (and letter) of the GPL, they are in violation.
I got a barb like that..
:o)
:o)
I play it a few minutes, then give all the mana/rejuv. potions to my Sorc..
It's also fun to meet a new Sorc and give them craploads of mana - the reaction is fun..
FWIW, I do this because I _HATE_ the fact that you can't buy mana potions.. My level 35 sorc continually runs out, even with warmth at level 18 and a helm with two perfect skulls..
Blizzard may be able to say "you can't buy it" - but they can't stop me from giving it away
The source to Mindori Linux is available, so there shouldn't be a problem there.
There is a problem there.
The GPL says that the distributor of the binary has to make the source available.
The article doesn't mention who they spoke to at AOL, but the response they got ("look on the web for info about the GPL") was the wrong answer.
The correct answer should have been "You can download it from our server", or "we will send you out a CD with the source on it."
Quoting the quarter mile of other vehicles is like comparing apples to oranges.
If you knew how a turbine worked, you'd know that it doesn't accelerate like a 'normal' engine - with a turbine, the faster you are going, the faster you accelerate - so it accelerates slowly from the start..
Comparing the low-end acceleration of a turbine to an internal combustion engine just makes you look foolish.
Fastest motorcycle speed (from GuinnessWorldRecords.com)
OK, very nice, but is it street legal?
Didn't think so.
The point is that this bike is street legal.
After reading this article (and the others on the same topic) there seems to be something missing.. MS is attacking the GPL, but why? They can say 'Linux' specifically, but (as Alan Cox pointed out) why would they urge others to not use the GPL?
The general consensus is that they're scared of something they can't compete with, but I think that's a little short sighted..
It dawned on me while reading this article, that MS is urging against the GPL, not because they're scared of competition, but because they can't own a GPL'ed product..
I think that if MS was the only software company that provided non-GPL software (as in the unlikely event that every other company on earth suddenly GPL'ed their products..) from a competition standpoint, MS wouldn't really care - from what I've seen, they don't care about competing with other companies...
It's well known that MS rarely (ever?) invents anything themselves - most of their 'R&D' consists of buying other people's technologies.. Just think about what a GPL'ed world would do to them: unable to 'innovate', they'd be forced to come up with new technologies themselves!
I think that this is what really has MS running scared.. each of their competitors that embraces the GPL means one less corporate aquisition.. and that scares them more than anything else in the world..
Linux, by extension of this, is their worst nightmare - a technology that they can't own.
If that's supposed to be binary, shouldn't that be
"1 + 1 = 10" ?
Require SSH2 tunnels
t ml
Augh! NO! NO!
SSH is a good protocol for secure terminal sessions, but you should never, never use it for tunneling, unless you're fond of session-timeouts and stalled connections.
SSH uses TCP, which means it's the worst protocol you can use for a tunnel... TCP guarantees the reliability of the connection - so a dropped packet can wreak havok.. the tunnel will stop and re-transmit the packet - so every other TCP connection will stall - and guess what? These stalled connections think their packets have been lost, so they retransmit their 'lost' packets - resulting in LOTS of duplicat packets.. (and if the 'original' packet was lost due to congestion, you can guess that you're gonna start flooding the tunnel - a cascade failure.)
A more technical description is available at
http://sites.inka.de/sites/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.h
Unless you can guarantee that your network will never drop a packet, you need to use an unreliable protocol for the tunnel (think GRE - that's what it was designed for - but even UDP would be a better choice.)
What you're missing is that the machine that's doing the checksumming isn't necessarily the same machine that's viewing the page.
If the machine that's doing the checking is on a nice, big, fat pipe - it can check a page regularly (very quickly) - then send a notification to the user, who may be on a slow (dialup) link... this way the user doesn't have to keep visiting a page (they just wait for the change notification)
Yeah- this is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" things
No, it isn't.
but I have yet to hear of a web cache or proxy that uses md5sums instead of last-modified headers- are there any out there?
No, because that's a completely different question.
Just FYI, this has been going on for _ages_ There was a 'web page change detector' available back in my 14.4kbps modem days (early 1995 - I can't remember what it was called, tho - been too damn long) that used this very technique... you fed a URL into a CGI, and it would poll the page every so often and email you if it had changed. And guess what? It used a checksum of the page to determine if it had changed (since storing all those pages would just take way too much storage space.)
This is _NOT_ new, and it's _NOT_ non-obvious.
I doubt United Features Syndicate would want Peanuts strips easily travelling, and then being searched, on the web
United Media may not want that, but the other major comic syndicate (United Express, IIRC) seems to have a good attitude about it...
Both syndicates have always had 'one month' of each strip available - but last year the Uexpress website (www.uexpress.com) made a drastic change..
Last November, they put all of their comics online in a 'back issue' format.. instead of only showing one month of strips, you can go back all the way to 1996 (or whenever their website started carrying the strip - Duplex goes back to August of 96) - Calvin and Hobbes is being carried in its' entirety (more or less, they are revealing one at a time - offset by 11 years of the original strip date, so today's strip is from April 18, 1990; but it starts at November 17, 1985)
Contrast this with BC or Meg, which are so paranoid, they obfusicate the strip filename in a lame attempt to prevent someone from using a robot to download the strip.
You may not be able to get dilbert or Peanuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if Uexpress.com indexed their comics like this.
From the article:
:o)
Spam is one of those features of modern life, like infomercials and telemarketers, for which almost no one has a good word
It's not a feature, it's a bug.