Two items about the U.N.'s track record in technology:
Look at the wonderfulness that is the X.400/X.500 email/directory infrastructure, and the OSI protocol stack (take a look through the BSD source code for the remanants of it). Those were
real winners.
The ITU-T has a history of happily passing patent-riddled and overpriced standards. (Why's it taken so long to implement a free software modem?) I'm sure it will be delightful to every 'net software developer when the RFC editor position is retired, and we can shell out $75 to $250 a copy to Global Engineering Documents for a copy of an Internet standard.
Both Free Software Definition and Why ``Free Software'' is better than ``Open Source'' have laid out the differences pretty clearly for quite some time now. The differences are understood, and as apparent as the differences between BSD and GPL advocates. Stating he feels that the group that historically has been the most vocal should be swept under the rug is ludicrous, akin to Rush Limbaugh telling his AM radio audience that the Democratic party should be eliminated.
I'm not sure if anyone should RTFA, in this case it seems to just be a slow-news-day article designed to drive traffic to their site. Anyone disagree?
The argument, and it's a very valid one, being trumpeted by the irrational paranoid "radidation is bad, think of the children" idiots, is that the meat industry is full of many abhorrent greedy people who like the idea of selling meat packaged and handled in disgusted feces-filled E.coli-laden surroundings.
Just a reminder: Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray now require the implementation of Windows Media 9 (now VC-9, or VC-1 depending on who you ask). This means that anyone using a computer to play DVDs may be subject to Microsoft licensing restrictions.
Just a reminder: DVD and ATSC (American digital television spec, mandated by law) require the implementation of Dolby Labs AC3. This means anyone using a computer to play DVDs, or using a computer to watch broadcast television may be subject to Dolby licensing restrictions.
Just a reminder: VideoCD (MPEG-1) requires the implementation of The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Layer 3 algorithm. This means anyone using a computer to play Video CDs or listen to.MP3 music files may be subject to Fraunhofer licensing restrictions.
At the moment, Fraunhofer, for example, realize the futility of prosecuting implementations of software-only MP3 decoders. This does not mean they do not have the right to file lawsuits against the users and producers of such, even, should they so desire, to the point of requiring per-use license payments.
The ogg / vorbis / theora solutions that the industry is paying no attention to are the only specs that are free of this insanity. But don't get all worked up just because Microsoft was the company whose codec was chosen instead of one of the other evil companies in mpegla.com's portfolio, unless you want to be thought of as this guy.
I seem to recall a
story from somewhere about sketchy companies with closed source printer drivers. I think the guy who was affected by it did something or other...
Hmm, do you remember a demo that took hours to run that drew a 3-D graph that looked like a hat? I seem to recall the listing describing it as plotting an "Archimedes Spiral", it was only about 10 lines long. The final image was used as the title screen of the package "Printwiz". I've tried to no avail to find it on the 'net.
The GPL and BSD licenses are the most well understood licenses out there, and hence when someone else is considering using your code, they'll know right away what to expect.
Other less well-known licenses like Sakai should be left to organizations that have a legal department to make those decisions for them. The last thing you probably want is someone who might join in your software community and contribute useful changes back to you to be scared off by an unfamiliar license.
I predict an FF7 port to the PSP (Playstation portable), with city-to-city Sony tours letting people resurrect Aeris a-la
Mew from Pokemon. You heard it here first.
"I remarked to Dennis that easily half the code I was writing in Multics was
error recovery code. He said, "We left all that stuff out. If there's an error,
we have this routine called panic, and when it is called, the machine crashes,
and you holler down the hall, 'Hey, reboot it.'"
Tom van Vleck and Dennis Ritchie about Multics <-> UNIX relationship
I was thinking about this -- what if they offered a USB "pass-through" key, where the USB device could act as a smart-card (I.e. not have to divulge the secret key for HTTPS-client-cert or SSH2), and the keyboard?
Slashdot Mirror
And they're going to do what, say "gzip it" ? The amount of bandwidth and CPU time this wastes is abysmal.
Someone needs to stop these people.
If you look at her replies to Brad's post, you'll see she's trying to drum up hype for her friends alternative blog site.
See which licenses are on the FSF's list of Non-Free Software Licenses, but are listed on OSI's list of Approved Licenses.
For example, the Reciprocal Public License is Open Source but not Free. This is a useful distinction, in argument to Mr. Bedell's article.
The argument, and it's a very valid one, being trumpeted by the irrational paranoid "radidation is bad, think of the children" idiots, is that the meat industry is full of many abhorrent greedy people who like the idea of selling meat packaged and handled in disgusted feces-filled E.coli-laden surroundings.
Hmm, do you remember a demo that took hours to run that drew a 3-D graph that looked like a hat? I seem to recall the listing describing it as plotting an "Archimedes Spiral", it was only about 10 lines long. The final image was used as the title screen of the package "Printwiz". I've tried to no avail to find it on the 'net.
The GPL and BSD licenses are the most well understood licenses out there, and hence when someone else is considering using your code, they'll know right away what to expect.
Other less well-known licenses like Sakai should be left to organizations that have a legal department to make those decisions for them. The last thing you probably want is someone who might join in your software community and contribute useful changes back to you to be scared off by an unfamiliar license.
Timothy - for an app this widely deployed, this might [for the future] merit the frontpage instead of the IT section?
I was thinking about this -- what if they offered a USB "pass-through" key, where the USB device could act as a smart-card (I.e. not have to divulge the secret key for HTTPS-client-cert or SSH2), and the keyboard?
Yes, the screen could still be recorded.
http://www.tmbg.com/hello.html
:)
(I couldn't find it clicking around on the site, Google helped.
I'm not sure, but I think this may be the fix--
u de/asm-x86_64/i387.h@1.12?nav=index.html|ChangeSet @-4w|cset@1.1754.6.3
http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.6/diffs/incl
Google indicates there were at least some .IQ domains it spidered...
:)
IANA lists it as being there, and a little digging shows it hosted out of Texas by InfoComCorp, apparently related to Synaptix somehow.
'course, the nameserver looks rather empty.