You have to understand that anybody who owns more than two computers runs a cyber-cafe: one to run Linux and squid, and two to sell Internet access with. Indians are incredibly entreprenurial. Makes you wonder why their government is so socialist.
-russ
Maybe we're hitting on the wrong people?
on
RFC for Spammers
·
· Score: 4
Maybe we're hitting on the wrong people? Maybe, instead of trying to get rid of spammers, we should get rid of people who reply to spam?
-russ
The two elementary particles of the universe
on
Home Improvement
·
· Score: 2
The two elementary particles of the universe are duct tape and baling wire. You can make anything out of the two of them.
-russ
Interesting business plan. Pay people 100% in stock options -- and in a business where many stock options have proven to be worthless. Well, it might fly.
-russ
Yup. It's as if the software was sentient, and owned itself. We don't permit people to sell themselves into slavery, and we don't permit GPL'ed software to sell itself into slavery. Arguably, this is sometimes needed to survive (both for people and software), but those circumstances are not present in most of the world today. Slavery survives in the world, but it is probably not voluntary, compensated slavery.
-russ
The problem comes when you try to reuse open source code. Even though both licenses may be open source, you might be unable to distribute a work derived from both of them.
-russ
You're right, we don't have the resources to produce these summaries. We can't ask the license submittors to provide them, because then they would have legal force, and could be used to substitute for the license in court. So, feel free to contribute these summaries. We'll be happy to put them up on opensource.org with your name in lights.
-russ
I'm the vice president of OSI, and as far as I am concerned, free software and open source are synonymous. Now, RMS (whose definition of "free software" is accepted by a large number of hackers) has a problem with the APSL because it requires publication of source even if binaries are not distributed. He says that people using "free software" have a right to privacy also. Well, I disagree that a free software license must also not deny privacy rights. I have made the case that this requirement increases the amount of free software. RMS says "not at the cost of privacy". But practically, the only privacy it infringes is that of a corporation which "deploys" software only to its employees. Well, what kind of privacy is that!
-russ
Actually, it *is* dumping when a company does it. The purpose of it is to remove vendors of proprietary works, in order to avoid having to compete with them, at least when a company does it. Will Ximian be able to charge monopoly prices for their services when they put Microsoft out of business? Possibly. There's a lot of money to be made from.NET. If Ximian can provide those services, they will experience nearly unlimited growth.
-russ
p.s. and yes Microsoft does it too, and no, I don't agree with the author of the parent of the parent of this article.
Some lawyers have argued that, as the copyright act provides no method for explicitly placing a work into the public domain, that words to that effect have no effect. Obviously, at the copyright infringement trial, you'd have a hard time arguing that you intended to enforce any copy rights if you claimed that your work was in the public domain.
-russ
There are known DOSes in qmail that have been there for (literally) years with no attempt made to address them.
This is a lie. Dan has said that those DOS attacks are preventable by using ulimit. Why should qmail reproduce a system facility?
Exim has had security holes. No thank you.
a DOS which allows an attacker with a substantially smaller pipe to swamp a server with overwhelming resources _should_ be fixed.
You are being ridiculous. You want to deny service to somebody with an SMTP server? Just start opening connections, and leave them idle. Eventually you'll either crash the machine or you'll run into a connection limit. For this "discovery" you expect Dan to pay you $500???
-russ
Every time I look at qmail, I see too many cool/needed modifications that will ONLY be distributed in a pain-in-the-ass patch format.
I do not believe this to be a necessity. People write patches because that is what they are used to doing. Instead, people should look at qmail as an email toolset, with a bunch of documented API's, just as Unix has documented API's and people write programs to use them.
Forbidding the change of file and directory locations has no conceivable security function,
You're quite right. The purpose is to keep qmail standard across all platforms. Nobody else tries to do it. I believe that it is a worthy goal. Often when people give answers on the qmail mailing list, they do so with shell commands. This is only possible because the helper knows where the helpee has installed qmail.
-russ
If a hole is discovered, you will immediately go to Dan Bernstein and he will pay you $500. Now, having done that, do you think he'll let that security hole sit around for one microsecond more than necessary? The $500 security guarantee is not there to compensate you for your costs. It's to guarantee that Dan takes security seriously.
-russ
p.s. Erik Troan said the same thing four years ago. There has not been a security hole in qmail in that whole time. So, in hindsight, Redhat could have been shipping qmail that whole time, and never had to worry about fixing a qmail hole. How many sendmail holes have there been in that time?
Ahhh, but the thing that you're missing is 1) there is no widely-accepted standard for file locations across all Unix platforms, 2) if you're actually paying attention, you'll see that Dan has changed his mind between qmail and djbdns (in other words, he's experimenting to see what's best), and 3) what seems weird to you seems normal to someone trying to help qmail users. I don't have to ask where you've installed qmail. I KNOW where you've installed qmail. I can give you exact shell script commands telling you what file to modify.
And in particular, it doesn't matter whether you've installed qmail yourself in/usr/local, or whether you've installed it via an RPM in/usr. The license doesn't permit binaries to install it in weird places.
Yes, I realize that the "system stuff goes in/usr, locally-installed stuff goes in/usr/local" idea makes a kind of sense. But there are other ideas that make more sense, such as "Package foo gets installed in location bar", where "bar" is constant no matter what flavor Unix you're running.
The alternative is to impose extra support costs on the qmail support community, for what benefit? So that YOU don't have to think qmail is installed in a weird place? That's worth nothing to me -- certainly not the cost of having to wonder where in the hell you installed qmail on your version of Unix.
-russ
So you don't like daemontools? Write your own then. Nobody else has. Daemontools fills a badly needed hole in the Unix toolset -- control of a daemon. Or are you going to tell me that:
Well, Microsoft isn't going to be able to touch the meaning of OSI Certification. It would help us if people explicitly said that their open source project, using a license listed at http://opensource.org/licenses/, is "OSI Certified".
-russ
A program is expressive because it is more akin to a description of how to do something, rather than doing it. There's a reason why programs are invariably copyrighted (even if a small fraction of them are also patentable). They are a literary work communicating from human to human, more akin to a patent appication than the patented device itself.
-russ
Feel free to argue that nobody should own the airwaves, and that anybody should be able to transmit on a frequency that nobody else is currently using. That's not what Jeremy is arguing. He's arguing that central planning is smarter than the market. Well, Jeremy, get a clue: the failure of the Soviet Union buried that corpse of an idea.
-russ
It's nice that there are more moderation points floating around, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to keep idiots from getting them?
-russ
p.s. the parent of this note was not a troll. It was instead intended to encourage people to go ahead and devise their own language. THIS note, on the other hand, IS a troll.
Re:Most ignorant comment in the history of mankind
on
Fission in a Box
·
· Score: 2
In other words, instead of dying of cancer from living near an undetected uranium mine, I'd die from radiation poisoning. Okay, that's fair enough. But I'm still dead.
Perhaps I overstated my case. Perhaps you overstated your subject line?
-russ
Okay, let's talk some sense here. Wherever it was originally dug up from, it wasn't at background levels. Obviously, otherwise it wouldn't be any more useful than background radiation is. So why can't we put it back where it came from? Conversely, why aren't people who currently live on top of uranium deposits worried about it?
-russ
Much of the reason for the high cost of nuclear power is because of the safety mechanisms required by the public. The public does not trust nuclear power because its safety consists of multiplying an extremely small number (probability of meltdown) by an extremely large number (the consequences of a meltdown). The public prefers a known probability that coal miners be killed, that coal trains derail, that gas pipelines explode, and the radiation emitted by burning coal.
However, these new plants are much smaller (smaller danger from meltdown) and much obviously safer (e.g. no possibility of run-away), so they will produce a new level of trust in people.
Don't worry about disposal. The nuclear material exists in nature now and we manage to live with it. There's no reason why we can't put it back with a level of safety equal to background radiation.
-russ
Slashdot Mirror
You have to understand that anybody who owns more than two computers runs a cyber-cafe: one to run Linux and squid, and two to sell Internet access with. Indians are incredibly entreprenurial. Makes you wonder why their government is so socialist.
-russ
Maybe we're hitting on the wrong people? Maybe, instead of trying to get rid of spammers, we should get rid of people who reply to spam?
-russ
The two elementary particles of the universe are duct tape and baling wire. You can make anything out of the two of them.
-russ
Interesting business plan. Pay people 100% in stock options -- and in a business where many stock options have proven to be worthless. Well, it might fly.
-russ
It's the *software* that is free,
Yup. It's as if the software was sentient, and owned itself. We don't permit people to sell themselves into slavery, and we don't permit GPL'ed software to sell itself into slavery. Arguably, this is sometimes needed to survive (both for people and software), but those circumstances are not present in most of the world today. Slavery survives in the world, but it is probably not voluntary, compensated slavery.
-russ
The problem comes when you try to reuse open source code. Even though both licenses may be open source, you might be unable to distribute a work derived from both of them.
-russ
You're right, we don't have the resources to produce these summaries. We can't ask the license submittors to provide them, because then they would have legal force, and could be used to substitute for the license in court. So, feel free to contribute these summaries. We'll be happy to put them up on opensource.org with your name in lights.
-russ
I'm the vice president of OSI, and as far as I am concerned, free software and open source are synonymous. Now, RMS (whose definition of "free software" is accepted by a large number of hackers) has a problem with the APSL because it requires publication of source even if binaries are not distributed. He says that people using "free software" have a right to privacy also. Well, I disagree that a free software license must also not deny privacy rights. I have made the case that this requirement increases the amount of free software. RMS says "not at the cost of privacy". But practically, the only privacy it infringes is that of a corporation which "deploys" software only to its employees. Well, what kind of privacy is that!
-russ
Actually, it *is* dumping when a company does it. The purpose of it is to remove vendors of proprietary works, in order to avoid having to compete with them, at least when a company does it. Will Ximian be able to charge monopoly prices for their services when they put Microsoft out of business? Possibly. There's a lot of money to be made from .NET. If Ximian can provide those services, they will experience nearly unlimited growth.
-russ
p.s. and yes Microsoft does it too, and no, I don't agree with the author of the parent of the parent of this article.
Then why is the warranty language there? You need a contract to disclaim warranty.
-russ
Some lawyers have argued that, as the copyright act provides no method for explicitly placing a work into the public domain, that words to that effect have no effect. Obviously, at the copyright infringement trial, you'd have a hard time arguing that you intended to enforce any copy rights if you claimed that your work was in the public domain.
-russ
There are known DOSes in qmail that have been there for (literally) years with no attempt made to address them.
This is a lie. Dan has said that those DOS attacks are preventable by using ulimit. Why should qmail reproduce a system facility?
Exim has had security holes. No thank you.
a DOS which allows an attacker with a substantially smaller pipe to swamp a server with overwhelming resources _should_ be fixed.
You are being ridiculous. You want to deny service to somebody with an SMTP server? Just start opening connections, and leave them idle. Eventually you'll either crash the machine or you'll run into a connection limit. For this "discovery" you expect Dan to pay you $500???
-russ
Every time I look at qmail, I see too many cool/needed modifications that will ONLY be distributed in a pain-in-the-ass patch format.
I do not believe this to be a necessity. People write patches because that is what they are used to doing. Instead, people should look at qmail as an email toolset, with a bunch of documented API's, just as Unix has documented API's and people write programs to use them.
Forbidding the change of file and directory locations has no conceivable security function,
You're quite right. The purpose is to keep qmail standard across all platforms. Nobody else tries to do it. I believe that it is a worthy goal. Often when people give answers on the qmail mailing list, they do so with shell commands. This is only possible because the helper knows where the helpee has installed qmail.
-russ
If a hole is discovered, you will immediately go to Dan Bernstein and he will pay you $500. Now, having done that, do you think he'll let that security hole sit around for one microsecond more than necessary? The $500 security guarantee is not there to compensate you for your costs. It's to guarantee that Dan takes security seriously.
-russ
p.s. Erik Troan said the same thing four years ago. There has not been a security hole in qmail in that whole time. So, in hindsight, Redhat could have been shipping qmail that whole time, and never had to worry about fixing a qmail hole. How many sendmail holes have there been in that time?
Ahhh, but the thing that you're missing is 1) there is no widely-accepted standard for file locations across all Unix platforms, 2) if you're actually paying attention, you'll see that Dan has changed his mind between qmail and djbdns (in other words, he's experimenting to see what's best), and 3) what seems weird to you seems normal to someone trying to help qmail users. I don't have to ask where you've installed qmail. I KNOW where you've installed qmail. I can give you exact shell script commands telling you what file to modify.
/usr/local, or whether you've installed it via an RPM in /usr. The license doesn't permit binaries to install it in weird places.
/usr, locally-installed stuff goes in /usr/local" idea makes a kind of sense. But there are other ideas that make more sense, such as "Package foo gets installed in location bar", where "bar" is constant no matter what flavor Unix you're running.
And in particular, it doesn't matter whether you've installed qmail yourself in
Yes, I realize that the "system stuff goes in
The alternative is to impose extra support costs on the qmail support community, for what benefit? So that YOU don't have to think qmail is installed in a weird place? That's worth nothing to me -- certainly not the cost of having to wonder where in the hell you installed qmail on your version of Unix.
-russ
So you don't like daemontools? Write your own then. Nobody else has. Daemontools fills a badly needed hole in the Unix toolset -- control of a daemon. Or are you going to tell me that:
kill -HUP `ps aux (or -ef) | grep processname | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'
is reasonable?
Well, Microsoft isn't going to be able to touch the meaning of OSI Certification. It would help us if people explicitly said that their open source project, using a license listed at http://opensource.org/licenses/, is "OSI Certified".
-russ
A program is expressive because it is more akin to a description of how to do something, rather than doing it. There's a reason why programs are invariably copyrighted (even if a small fraction of them are also patentable). They are a literary work communicating from human to human, more akin to a patent appication than the patented device itself.
-russ
Feel free to argue that nobody should own the airwaves, and that anybody should be able to transmit on a frequency that nobody else is currently using. That's not what Jeremy is arguing. He's arguing that central planning is smarter than the market. Well, Jeremy, get a clue: the failure of the Soviet Union buried that corpse of an idea.
-russ
It's nice that there are more moderation points floating around, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to keep idiots from getting them?
-russ
p.s. the parent of this note was not a troll. It was instead intended to encourage people to go ahead and devise their own language. THIS note, on the other hand, IS a troll.
In other words, instead of dying of cancer from living near an undetected uranium mine, I'd die from radiation poisoning. Okay, that's fair enough. But I'm still dead.
Perhaps I overstated my case. Perhaps you overstated your subject line?
-russ
Okay, let's talk some sense here. Wherever it was originally dug up from, it wasn't at background levels. Obviously, otherwise it wouldn't be any more useful than background radiation is. So why can't we put it back where it came from? Conversely, why aren't people who currently live on top of uranium deposits worried about it?
-russ
Why don't they just put it back underground?
Yes, why don't they?
-russ
Do we really want to cause the death of an industry for the sake of cheap electricity?
Yes, we do.
The millions of people who work in electricity plants, where nuclear reactors are used responsibly by the government, will beg to differ on that one.
A society that protects its workers at the expense of its consumers will forever be a poor society.
-russ
Much of the reason for the high cost of nuclear power is because of the safety mechanisms required by the public. The public does not trust nuclear power because its safety consists of multiplying an extremely small number (probability of meltdown) by an extremely large number (the consequences of a meltdown). The public prefers a known probability that coal miners be killed, that coal trains derail, that gas pipelines explode, and the radiation emitted by burning coal.
However, these new plants are much smaller (smaller danger from meltdown) and much obviously safer (e.g. no possibility of run-away), so they will produce a new level of trust in people.
Don't worry about disposal. The nuclear material exists in nature now and we manage to live with it. There's no reason why we can't put it back with a level of safety equal to background radiation.
-russ