Slashdot Mirror


User: Score+Whore

Score+Whore's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,310
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,310

  1. Re:Solution: Repeal The Second Amendment on John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source · · Score: 2

    A knife wound is a lot more deadly than a gun wound. Admittedly a gun makes it a lot easier to, for example, open someones head up, but a knife can still do it. I'd rather be shot in the gut with a 9 mm or a 45 than be stuck in the gut with a 6-9" blade. The blade is going to make a large whole.

  2. Re:I hope he doesn't release the code... on John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source · · Score: 2

    Couple of points:

    - There are no such thing as "GPL laws". GPL is a license that gives some permissions and sets some restrictions above and beyond the normal rights available under copyright.
    - If Carmack has more money than the FSF, then the FSF probably doesn't have a "world class" attorney. Assuming that they aren't going to be idiots and recommend an attorney that they have never worked with, then it follows that the recommended attorney isn't "world class."

  3. Re:Anyone know a little more about this? on John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source · · Score: 2

    Because competition and independant development is good. That's why all the childish ranters out there spouting "stop coding on foobar and be assimilated into the Linux way" are so laughable.

  4. Re:A quakelives betatester... on John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source · · Score: 2
    ....there is no central governing body which decides what goes and what doesn't, it's all done through public scrutiny.


    Well, there's Tom.

    Good to see you're still alive John.

    -Bubbles
  5. Re:A quakelives betatester... on John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source · · Score: 2

    All this "anti-cheat" code does is to provide legitimacy to cheaters. The fact is that no amount of crypto/signing/pki/etc can prevent people from cheating. During the development of Paradise netrek (which coincided with the crypt-to-RSA transition of binary authentication) we had to look at this. You truly can't stop it. The server has to accept input across a network from the clients, there is no possible way to ensure that the "client" you are talking to is really the client you think it is. Closed source just raises the bar on who can develop the code to cheat.

    It's going to be really bad when all these teams start spouting their "cheat proof" versions of the game. There is going to be many moments of realization that their work was basically wasted.

  6. Re:One step closer to 3D in Linux (FBSD?) on XFree86 3.9.18 Today, v4.0 in March · · Score: 2

    That's not entirely true. X does use it's own loader, contributed by Metroworks (I think). However some modules still require certain kernel support, such as the fbdev driver. So a subset of the modules will work on any architecture, but not all of them will work everywhere.

  7. Re:Agreed -- the MPAA is *not* to be trifled with on A New DeCSS · · Score: 1

    Course when the little guys start vanishing you gotta worry about the little guys taking some vengance. Let's look at this situation some more. On one hand you have big corp. and their (supposed) ties to organized crime. One the other you have a totally random collection of relatively intelligent, relatively wealthy geeks scattered all over the world. In a fight, which do you think would win? It's easy to identify the targets in one group. It's not so easy to do so with the other.

    It's the totally random killing that is difficult to prevent. And if every person you see on the street is the one who could be gunning for your ass, you'd better just stay indoors.

    Course this is all hypothetical, because (even if there was a connection) your average crime boss isn't an idiot and they realize that there really is nothing that can be done about this particular situation. The only hope the MPAA and RIAA have of getting saved in this is to have the government back them up.

  8. Re:Law Doesn't Do Much In VA on Anti-Spam law Passed in Colorado · · Score: 2

    Of course it's going to be difficult to fight it, but if you do find that some spam factory is sending you spam and you live in one of these states, you go straight to court. Let's get real here, they'll either start adding the mandatory "ADV:" or they send you $10. If they don't do one or the other they end up in jail eventually.

  9. Re:I wish I had the script ready, but... on Virginia House Passes UCITA · · Score: 2

    Creating AC accounts is a bad thing, I think. The hassles involved in maintaining a continously growing AC database would outweigh the work necessary to provide kill file support. I still think that IP addresses provided along with each AC post will allow people to don't want the cookie (and in public labs, etc. can't keep a cookie) but will still allow for some nice control. As I mentioned above regged users can selectively drop out ACs from particular subnets. Slashdot as a whole can identify problem subnets and block those (If a particular troll attempts to get around specific IP banning by hanging up his dialin or moving to another IP on his subnet, statistical methods can identify the presence of said troll based on moderation and the subnet in use. Thus code could be developed to block ACs from posting from a certain part of the network.)

    Of course becoming a registered user should be enough to get past any controls on ACs. So if you are on a subnet with an asshole, you can still participate by regging.

  10. Re:I, for one, will keep reading Slashdot on Virginia House Passes UCITA · · Score: 1

    Not that I'm really in favor of an old boys system here on slashdot, the idea that lurking for a year and then having to sit through another period of being a "newbie" is a bit of a strawman. There's nothing that says you can't lurk with an account.

  11. Re:I, for one, will stop reading Slashdot on Virginia House Passes UCITA · · Score: 1

    Unless you are willing to devote time to constructing magic killfiles on a per thread basis, they won't be useful for clearing out all the hoser ACs. Ideally slashdot would include ip addresses/dns names for all ACs. That way you could develop killfiles based on "geographical" information that would be somewhat useful across threads. If someone wants to be anonymous, they should have to create an account that has a posting history and all that baggage so that people can discriminate on that basis.

  12. Duh on RealNames Customer Data Stolen · · Score: 1

    You'd think that at some point these damned companies that collect sensitive information would start treating it like it was sensitive. I wonder if it'd be possible to put the screws to some of these guys?

  13. Re:Well... on Linus, Transmeta, Proprietary Code and Metcalfe · · Score: 1

    Actually it doesn't make a lot of sense to not allow people to code directly for the CPU. Sure it may be weird due to the necessity of supporting a fast x86 translation architecture. But for an embeded system where you don't particularily care for x86 compatibility, but would like the ability to dynamically tune processor speed or you need to low heat generation aspects of the chip; it's just stupid to require that you run x86 code. You lose performance.

  14. Re:Look, sport on Linux vs. NT Reliability · · Score: 0

    These anonymous, hear-say testimonials that I ranted against in my post do nobody any good. Say I'm going to propose installing a FreeBSD box running samba as the PDC for a new division at my job. Exactly how much good does it do to say "I heard somewhere that some big company is running this same setup and reportedly functions perfectly." "Nope sorry, I can't actually back it up with any facts or a name that can be contacted to get the story from." Having a name, position, company, etc. just adds weight to any kind of claim ever made. It's laughable how many people counter a report by some well known lab by giving ambiguous, fact free arguments.

    Get a clue, munch.

  15. Re:Look, sport on Linux vs. NT Reliability · · Score: 1

    If any piece of hardware is going down every 90 minutes then the admin ought to be taken out and shot. I can't think of a single OS that can't be made more stable than that.

    It's pretty damned funny how people always say "I made a Linux box and replaced such and such a functionality of an unstable NT box" when in almost every case a properly configured NT box could easily do the job. I'd like to see some backed up testimonials about Linux in the enterprise much like you see testimonials about NT in the enterprise. Oddly enough all I ever see on Slashdot is some AC posting "I work for the largest company in the world, we have a gross income larger than the cumulative GNP of any fourteen countries you care to name, and we run linux exclusively from our secretaries typing away in vi to our most technologically advanced toilets, running PHP3/toiletd for automated flushing. And not a single box has ever crashed, our uptimes look like this:

    9:25am up 37,244 days, 3:38

    And that's the box I had to replace the motherboard on because Linux was only able to keep it running for six weeks while it was on fire."

    Come on people, stand up, say your names, be prepared to have legit journalists to approach you in the real world.

  16. Re:Oh, come on. on DDoS Attacks Traced to UCSB, Stanford · · Score: 2

    As someone else who was "there" when all this started, I can state the major problem with your theory: the NSF stopped funding the backbone. Sure you'd have the occasional techy running some kind of site across his isdn line or modem, but you would definitely not see the kind of bandwidth that exists today without all the ecommerce to fund it.

  17. Re:Oh, come on. on DDoS Attacks Traced to UCSB, Stanford · · Score: 2

    No DDoS attacks are not a kind of force of nature. A force of nature is something that happens on it's own, not something that is initiated by a person.

    By the logic you used in the parent to this thread, it would be your fault if somebody was to shoot you dead, because "you could have been wearing a bullet proof vest."

    Even though there are problems with the net, act of senseless stupidity are not to be excused because they can be done.

  18. Re:**you** are responsble for what your computer d on DDoS Attacks Traced to UCSB, Stanford · · Score: 1

    Depends on what you mean by "has faulty brakes". Most vehicles don't leave the factory with faulty breaks, so if your particular car has faulty brakes and you could "prove" it in court, you'd also have to prove that they had just went out, otherwise you'd probably be looking at a reckless driving situation as well as a red light.

  19. Re:Defensive patent or over-reaction? on Real Time Linux, Now Patented · · Score: 1

    Derrr, patent farms don't use patents. They just collect, breed, and show them.

  20. Re:Important considerations on Real Time Linux, Now Patented · · Score: 1

    He'd just lose the patent if it went to court and the judge found that his technique was already common.

  21. Re:fine line on Real Time Linux, Now Patented · · Score: 2

    Linus doesn't hold patents on Linux. Secondly, the concept of "protecting" Linux via software patents is more cockeyed than a three legged dolphin.

  22. Re:Linux sales only on Linux Grabs #2 Server OS Sales Spot, NT Still #1 · · Score: 2
    ...are legally supposed to pay for software.


    Which means, of course, that they won't show up in the sales figures. No? Yet they often will drop $35 for "the cause."
  23. Re:Linux Grows/MS Shoots Itself in the Foot on Linux Grabs #2 Server OS Sales Spot, NT Still #1 · · Score: 2

    Not going to touch on piracy (which can indeed exist in a "GNU" world, just don't contribute your changes back...) But it's probably smart to realize that StarOffice is only a replacement for MS Office in the home enviroment. It's not even in the same ballpark in an enterprise.

  24. Re:But 1 Linux server = 4 NT servers on Linux Grabs #2 Server OS Sales Spot, NT Still #1 · · Score: 2

    Not to cast aspersions, but the amount of utility you can leverage from a server is often directly relevant to the skill of the admin. The primary difference between NT and Linux in this area is that Linux typically provides less feature-full services and NT requires a lot more proprietary training. With Linux you can look under the hood easily and figure out how things work and why a particular configuration isn't doing the right thing. With NT, unless you are Terje Mathieson, you just can't do that.

  25. Re:Oxymoron on Linux Grabs #2 Server OS Sales Spot, NT Still #1 · · Score: 1

    Why are you installing a web browser on a server? Does your boss know about this?