If the AdTI were in any way objective, I would welcome their criticism. But, having seen their lies many, many times over the past couple of years, I know that it is hopeless. It is one thing to leverage criticism, but someone whose sole interest is to see the demise of Linux is not someone I am going to allow to influence -any- of my corporate decisions.
It will come as a surprise to no one that the AdTI, which attempts to portray itself as bipartisan, is actually 100% scum. The following is the text of an e-mail I sent to AdTI president Ken Brown (kenbrown@adti.net) not five minutes before I saw the Slashdot story:
=== cut here ===
Subject: Oh, my.
How had I not hit this link yet? http://www.answers.com/topic/alexis-de-tocqu eville -institution
It goes without saying that my opinion of you has suddenly -- and almost incredibly -- dropped several notches. Nothing you have to say in your defense will in the least matter. I will gladly -- and publicly -- continue to flame you, but believe me; nothing you write will ever sway me.
Until today, I thought you were merely "for sale." Now I know that you are reprehensible, and without redeeming value of any kind. Covert collusion with the tobacco corporations?
The bottom line, from an etymological standpoint, is that all of these are relatively arbitrary assignations. Why is it still the "Theory of Relativity," when it's "Moore's Law"? Bottom line: I think that "law," when used in a context such as this, is used with a bit of ironic tongue-in-cheek. The person making the designation *knows* it's not a law in the strict sense; but, instead of watering it down with other more mundane nomenclature, they go for the gusto, curious to see whether or not their theory will weather examination.
But that's just my $.02. Call it "Slartibartfast's Law."
- who said that Linux sucks, and would die years ago - who predicted the Internet would implode... years ago - whose ego far outpaces his abilities?
[Check old columns in InfoWorld, c. 2000, for details.]
Granted -- he did some good stuff. But the truly good stuff he's done was so long ago that the only meaning it has in contemporary terms is a resume line item. Now he's just another VC talking head, with ego to match; to find that one of his "laws" doesn't hold water is about the same as saying that SCO's legal team isn't always on the level.
Something that's been bandied about for years by SF authors. And, no, I'm not talking a "beanstalk" using the Clarke belt, but, rather, a catapult. Yes, a miles-long one, preferably near the equator (factoring in the Earth's spin would help a fair bit). A huge engineering feat, to be sure, but virtually nothing compared to 25K+ miles worth of nanotube magic rope required for a beanstalk. That, and the fact that a beanstalk requires equilibrium, something that most people conveniently forget to mention. A catapult is "fire and forget." It probably wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the sole source of propulsion to gain orbit; air would offer too much initial resistance. But it could get you high up enough, and fast enough, to get your scramjets working just fine.
I was thinking about issues along these exact same lines, and a way to get arround the inherent issue -- an issue that occurs in many other places -- came to me: expand the functionality of DNS. As it is, when you perform a DNS query, you are given an IP address, a hostname, or an MX record. Would it be that much more difficult to extend it a little bit, and have an optional "service 'FOO' can be found at port 12345"? Initially, clients would still expect to find their services at traditional ports (eg., http at port 80), but anyone who truly cared could distribute modified client software, such as Firefox (or Vonage phones) with the additional functionality. This would make port blocking ridiculous, because, for example, Vonage could have a VoIP system on port 80 -- making ISPs have to start block hosts to disable VoIP, and that would truly be flagrant censorship, and disallowed. Yes, there are some complications, but I think it's something that should be considered.
Unless I'm very wrong, titles can't be copyrighted. This is why, for example, you see movies and books, years apart (but not longer than copyright lifetime) with the same titles, but nothing else in common, eg. "Blind Date" [boy, was I confused when that wasn't the movie I'd expected]. In addition to my anecdotal evidence, I do seem to recall reading an actual lawyer commenting on this, though that was at least 15 years ago...
White noise has content. So, sure, go ahead and copyright -your- white noise. But, so long as someone else didn't mimic yours (which wouldn't be too hard -- or even desired, what with white noise being essentially random), they'd be fine. In other words, as Hunter S. Thompson would say, "Just put your TV between channels, pump up the volume, and listen to the wonderful white noise." And not sweat the copyright.
Sorry, but no. As I seem to recall, there is a minimum number of notes required in order to copyright something. As a corallary, you could not write a "book" with the contents being the word "the", and then sue everyone for breach of copyright. In other words, raw, unadulturated silence cannot be copyrighted; it needs content.
1) This may or may not be a troll, re: suing MAME deveopers, but it's not a troll in that this bozo is attempting to get a trademark for it. 2) Yes, as someone asked, someone did attempt to get the trademark for "Linux", and demanded payment for use of said trademark. Needless to say, he didn't get real far.
The bottom line is that there is -NO- chance for him to get AND KEEP the trademark. Some bozo might grant it -- after all, the Linux one was granted -- but it would be withdrawn so fast it would make your head spin when both prior copyright and prior art are shown, and in abundance. He doesn't have a prayer.
In New York City, about a decade ago, an architect was trying to charge people for taking pictures of his building. The court overturned his case, saying that it was (pretty much by definition) a public work. Not sure where to dig this up, but I read about it in the NY Times; I'm sure their dead-tree index might be helpful.
Long before Knoppix, Linuxcare had a 50 MB bootable Debian image that was really, really slick. Unfortunately, with only 50 MB, it certainly wasn't meant as anything other than a cute trick/rescue disk -- I'd say that Knoppix definitely qualifies as the first big-time "Joe User" bootable Linux CD-ROM.
Sorry, but that's Just Dumb. If your CEO, etc., know so little about Linux that they barely know what a distribution is, then it's simple: tell them you're using "Linux," and go with whatever distribution best fits your needs. Oh, and that's "Ubuntu". IMHO, I would choose Debian -- or a Debian flavor -- if security is paramount. Its install, etc., isn't as slick as RH, but when it's up, it's rock solid, and it's a sysadmin's dream for patching and upgrading. In other words, it's more work to get running, but we're not talking "users", here, we're talking sysadmins. Glitz is great on the desktop -- but for servers, I want stuff I can maintain in as easy and automated a fashion as feasible, and Debian fits the bill perfectly; rarely, if ever, does a Debian "stable" fall into the dread RH Dependency Hell.
Yes, we know that Open Source, would alleviate this issue. That's one of the reasons we read Slashdot. But we don't really need to be beaten over the head with it -- believe it or not, proprietary software has its place, and I'll be glad to back that up with a full-fledged, fleshed-out argument, if you'd like. In the meantime, though... it's a nice day (here, at least;-) -- go outside and enjoy it.
Finally, a real client will be available for OSS calendaring. Granted, Sunbird is giving it a go, but I think that this will be warm and fuzzy for corporate users. This is a Good Thing!
Not the guy who forwarded it to Slashdot's fault; the BBC got it wrong. According to the Lowell Observatory's site, it's 7 au in radius, or about 1.3 billion MILES. That's B-I-G.
And dang, you'd expect the BBC to keep their units right.
Back in the olden days -- late 60's, early 70's -- my father was a programmer on IBM 360's. My first typing was done on the punchard machine; some of my first toys were those brightly-colored magtape write protect rings (I *loved* those damn things. Anyone got any to spare?). That, however, didn't get me "going" with computers; what did was a busride home with my father one day, where he explained binary to me, using a punchard. "And so, if we have a hole here, and here, but not here, that can stand for the number 7!" [We avoided discussions of BCD at the time.;^] And it just clicked. From then, on, I've been a computer addict.
One thing that occurs to me, not that I harbor an ill will against Microsoft , is that this could be the call to arms of MS gettingready to start trying to collect/stifle with their patent suite. After all, just last week(?), MS pointed out that they feel they have all sorts of rights regarding myriad open protocols. Perhaps this is just to make their customers feel safe, considering what they may be about to try with Linux customers? Thank heavens that IBM can fight this one toe-to-toe.
He had written a batch file that was supposed to remove the files off a floppy, and install correct versions. However, it didn't do much error checking. If it was invoked without the correct parameters, it defaulted to c:. D'oh! I sat there and literally -watched- as the icons were deleted off the (Windows 3.1) desktop, before lunging for the power button. Alas, too late. So I re-installed everything from bare metal, restored what I could... and got the EXACT SAME CALL three days later. Even though this was some ten years ago, my (x-)boss and I still chuckle about it. "Ah, that wild and crazy Roger..."
I hate to say it, but does "original footage" even *mean* anything any more? In the day where "Photoshop" is a verb, I posit that it doesn't. Not really. It just plunges us back into "he said, she said" expert-witness land, where, to a large extent, we already reside. The only people it will solidly convince will be those who took it -- and, since they were there to start with, that doesn't really accomplish much. As a means to catch your babysitter yapping on the phone, it'll be fine. For anything more than that, though, I wonder.
[Submitted through http://jfs.ohio.gov/feedback/] Hello. This afternoon, I read an article on Slashdot.org -- one of the pre-eminent sources of information for those in the IT industry. In this article, it turned out that an employee of OJDFS was terminated for using the "SETI" @home client to parse data.
To say that this is a common practice among programmers and engineers is a vast understatement. Most companies have no issue with it, so long as it remains on the end-user's personal computer. However, Mr. Smith chose to run it on a server, which was perhaps an unfortunate choice. The client has "smarts:" it refrains from using system resources unless the system is idle; thus, it has virtually no impact on regular workloads. Nevertheless, it seems likely that it is against OJDFS policy to run most any personal program on a server. Given that this is probably the case, at the absolute WORST, a stern "Don't do that" would more than likely have sufficed. When we it was run -- on servers -- at Cisco Systems (the largest manufacturer of networking equipment in the world), we were merely asked to stop. Period.
So, what happens at OJDFS? He gets fired. Then, to add insult to injury, he gets publicly humiliated by Tom Hayes, the director of OJDFS. Who, if the stories about him on news.google.com are even close to correct, has managed to lose track of OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS [Cincinnati Enquirer,http://tinyurl.com/4uf4d] on his watch. No wonder he's "retiring." I'm just surprised his retirment doesn't involve having his uniform sewn by Marth Stewert.
I live in New Hampshire, and I think it's a great state. However, I went to school in Ohio (Wooster), and thought that Ohio was pretty nice, too... so it saddens me to see someone in power who is obviously trite, incompetent, and petty. Good riddance to Tom, and may the best of luck follow Mr. Smith.
Nope. The "collective wisdom" is that conservatives want less government, but it's not quite true. I'd re-phrase it this way: they don't want to pay for government unless it protects their interests. I learned this the hard way, while working at a bakery 20 years ago: we had a machine that allowed us to dump in eggs by the dozen. It would then spin them really fast, thus cracking the shells, which were held up by a strainer, and then dumping the eggs' contents into a container for the bakery to bake with. Nifty idea, and kept us from having to buy pre-packaged, less-fresh, already-shelled eggs.
Until the owners of the businesses that sold said already-shelled eggs noticed. They, in turn, called up their (republican) congressmen, and screamed that they were losing profit. So, under the guise of "protecting the public's health" [despite the fact that NOT ONE SINGLE CASE of disease/sickness was reported], a law was passed outlawing the nifty egg cracker.
Needless to say, there are zillions of parallels to this lesson in IP-land, deCSS-land, etc. Sadly, it's not just the republicans who stand behind larger gov't to protect interests: the dems are just as bad with the DMCA as the republicans. Just one of the reasons I'm an independent.
Well, it's not speed, per-se, but the vector. Basically, you need to be going (ROUGHLY!) 25K mph at some vector that doesn't intersect with the Earth (and, preferably, avoids its atmosphere, too: see SkyLab).
No, there's no coaching whatsoever. After the great gameshow debacle in the 50's (there's a movie by -- not starring -- Robert Redford about this, which I can't remember the name of), this stuff was clamped down on BIG time. A friend of mine -- super-duper smart -- was on Jeopardy!, and wrote up an article about it at the time. For one, they do it in batches; IIRC, they knock off three shows in one day, and show them MUCH later. (Lots of NDA signage re: the results occurs when you get selected.) While they foster the illusion that it's live, it's not. In addition, while they're friendly with Alex during the game, there's essentially NO mingling at any other time -- no sense of impropriety is wanted or allowed. Etc. Honestly, from his article, it sounded a lot less chummy to be a Jeopardy! participant than it looks like from watching the show.
Slashdot Mirror
If the AdTI were in any way objective, I would welcome their criticism. But, having seen their lies many, many times over the past couple of years, I know that it is hopeless. It is one thing to leverage criticism, but someone whose sole interest is to see the demise of Linux is not someone I am going to allow to influence -any- of my corporate decisions.
It will come as a surprise to no one that the AdTI, which attempts to portray itself as bipartisan, is actually 100% scum. The following is the text of an e-mail I sent to AdTI president Ken Brown (kenbrown@adti.net) not five minutes before I saw the Slashdot story:
u eville -institution
=== cut here ===
Subject: Oh, my.
How had I not hit this link yet?
http://www.answers.com/topic/alexis-de-tocq
It goes without saying that my opinion of you has suddenly -- and almost incredibly -- dropped several notches. Nothing you have to say in your defense will in the least matter. I will gladly -- and publicly -- continue to flame you, but believe me; nothing you write will ever sway me.
Until today, I thought you were merely "for sale." Now I know that you are reprehensible, and without redeeming value of any kind. Covert collusion with the tobacco corporations?
Hanging is too good for you.
Good day, and good riddance.
The bottom line, from an etymological standpoint, is that all of these are relatively arbitrary assignations. Why is it still the "Theory of Relativity," when it's "Moore's Law"? Bottom line: I think that "law," when used in a context such as this, is used with a bit of ironic tongue-in-cheek. The person making the designation *knows* it's not a law in the strict sense; but, instead of watering it down with other more mundane nomenclature, they go for the gusto, curious to see whether or not their theory will weather examination.
But that's just my $.02. Call it "Slartibartfast's Law."
- who said that Linux sucks, and would die years ago
- who predicted the Internet would implode... years ago
- whose ego far outpaces his abilities?
[Check old columns in InfoWorld, c. 2000, for details.]
Granted -- he did some good stuff. But the truly good stuff he's done was so long ago that the only meaning it has in contemporary terms is a resume line item. Now he's just another VC talking head, with ego to match; to find that one of his "laws" doesn't hold water is about the same as saying that SCO's legal team isn't always on the level.
Something that's been bandied about for years by SF authors. And, no, I'm not talking a "beanstalk" using the Clarke belt, but, rather, a catapult. Yes, a miles-long one, preferably near the equator (factoring in the Earth's spin would help a fair bit). A huge engineering feat, to be sure, but virtually nothing compared to 25K+ miles worth of nanotube magic rope required for a beanstalk. That, and the fact that a beanstalk requires equilibrium, something that most people conveniently forget to mention. A catapult is "fire and forget." It probably wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the sole source of propulsion to gain orbit; air would offer too much initial resistance. But it could get you high up enough, and fast enough, to get your scramjets working just fine.
I was thinking about issues along these exact same lines, and a way to get arround the inherent issue -- an issue that occurs in many other places -- came to me: expand the functionality of DNS. As it is, when you perform a DNS query, you are given an IP address, a hostname, or an MX record. Would it be that much more difficult to extend it a little bit, and have an optional "service 'FOO' can be found at port 12345"? Initially, clients would still expect to find their services at traditional ports (eg., http at port 80), but anyone who truly cared could distribute modified client software, such as Firefox (or Vonage phones) with the additional functionality. This would make port blocking ridiculous, because, for example, Vonage could have a VoIP system on port 80 -- making ISPs have to start block hosts to disable VoIP, and that would truly be flagrant censorship, and disallowed. Yes, there are some complications, but I think it's something that should be considered.
Unless I'm very wrong, titles can't be copyrighted. This is why, for example, you see movies and books, years apart (but not longer than copyright lifetime) with the same titles, but nothing else in common, eg. "Blind Date" [boy, was I confused when that wasn't the movie I'd expected]. In addition to my anecdotal evidence, I do seem to recall reading an actual lawyer commenting on this, though that was at least 15 years ago...
White noise has content. So, sure, go ahead and copyright -your- white noise. But, so long as someone else didn't mimic yours (which wouldn't be too hard -- or even desired, what with white noise being essentially random), they'd be fine. In other words, as Hunter S. Thompson would say, "Just put your TV between channels, pump up the volume, and listen to the wonderful white noise." And not sweat the copyright.
Sorry, but no. As I seem to recall, there is a minimum number of notes required in order to copyright something. As a corallary, you could not write a "book" with the contents being the word "the", and then sue everyone for breach of copyright. In other words, raw, unadulturated silence cannot be copyrighted; it needs content.
1) This may or may not be a troll, re: suing MAME deveopers, but it's not a troll in that this bozo is attempting to get a trademark for it.
2) Yes, as someone asked, someone did attempt to get the trademark for "Linux", and demanded payment for use of said trademark. Needless to say, he didn't get real far.
The bottom line is that there is -NO- chance for him to get AND KEEP the trademark. Some bozo might grant it -- after all, the Linux one was granted -- but it would be withdrawn so fast it would make your head spin when both prior copyright and prior art are shown, and in abundance. He doesn't have a prayer.
In New York City, about a decade ago, an architect was trying to charge people for taking pictures of his building. The court overturned his case, saying that it was (pretty much by definition) a public work. Not sure where to dig this up, but I read about it in the NY Times; I'm sure their dead-tree index might be helpful.
Long before Knoppix, Linuxcare had a 50 MB bootable Debian image that was really, really slick. Unfortunately, with only 50 MB, it certainly wasn't meant as anything other than a cute trick/rescue disk -- I'd say that Knoppix definitely qualifies as the first big-time "Joe User" bootable Linux CD-ROM.
Sorry, but that's Just Dumb. If your CEO, etc., know so little about Linux that they barely know what a distribution is, then it's simple: tell them you're using "Linux," and go with whatever distribution best fits your needs. Oh, and that's "Ubuntu". IMHO, I would choose Debian -- or a Debian flavor -- if security is paramount. Its install, etc., isn't as slick as RH, but when it's up, it's rock solid, and it's a sysadmin's dream for patching and upgrading. In other words, it's more work to get running, but we're not talking "users", here, we're talking sysadmins. Glitz is great on the desktop -- but for servers, I want stuff I can maintain in as easy and automated a fashion as feasible, and Debian fits the bill perfectly; rarely, if ever, does a Debian "stable" fall into the dread RH Dependency Hell.
Yes, we know that Open Source, would alleviate this issue. That's one of the reasons we read Slashdot. But we don't really need to be beaten over the head with it -- believe it or not, proprietary software has its place, and I'll be glad to back that up with a full-fledged, fleshed-out argument, if you'd like. In the meantime, though... it's a nice day (here, at least ;-) -- go outside and enjoy it.
Finally, a real client will be available for OSS calendaring. Granted, Sunbird is giving it a go, but I think that this will be warm and fuzzy for corporate users. This is a Good Thing!
Not the guy who forwarded it to Slashdot's fault; the BBC got it wrong. According to the Lowell Observatory's site, it's 7 au in radius, or about 1.3 billion MILES. That's B-I-G.
And dang, you'd expect the BBC to keep their units right.
Back in the olden days -- late 60's, early 70's -- my father was a programmer on IBM 360's. My first typing was done on the punchard machine; some of my first toys were those brightly-colored magtape write protect rings (I *loved* those damn things. Anyone got any to spare?). That, however, didn't get me "going" with computers; what did was a busride home with my father one day, where he explained binary to me, using a punchard. "And so, if we have a hole here, and here, but not here, that can stand for the number 7!" [We avoided discussions of BCD at the time. ;^] And it just clicked. From then, on, I've been a computer addict.
One thing that occurs to me, not that I harbor an ill will against Microsoft , is that this could be the call to arms of MS gettingready to start trying to collect/stifle with their patent suite. After all, just last week(?), MS pointed out that they feel they have all sorts of rights regarding myriad open protocols. Perhaps this is just to make their customers feel safe, considering what they may be about to try with Linux customers? Thank heavens that IBM can fight this one toe-to-toe.
He had written a batch file that was supposed to remove the files off a floppy, and install correct versions. However, it didn't do much error checking. If it was invoked without the correct parameters, it defaulted to c:. D'oh! I sat there and literally -watched- as the icons were deleted off the (Windows 3.1) desktop, before lunging for the power button. Alas, too late. So I re-installed everything from bare metal, restored what I could... and got the EXACT SAME CALL three days later. Even though this was some ten years ago, my (x-)boss and I still chuckle about it. "Ah, that wild and crazy Roger..."
I hate to say it, but does "original footage" even *mean* anything any more? In the day where "Photoshop" is a verb, I posit that it doesn't. Not really. It just plunges us back into "he said, she said" expert-witness land, where, to a large extent, we already reside. The only people it will solidly convince will be those who took it -- and, since they were there to start with, that doesn't really accomplish much. As a means to catch your babysitter yapping on the phone, it'll be fine. For anything more than that, though, I wonder.
[Submitted through http://jfs.ohio.gov/feedback/]
Hello. This afternoon, I read an article on Slashdot.org -- one of the pre-eminent sources of information for those in the IT industry. In this article, it turned out that an employee of OJDFS was terminated for using the "SETI" @home client to parse data.
To say that this is a common practice among programmers and engineers is a vast understatement. Most companies have no issue with it, so long as it remains on the end-user's personal computer. However, Mr. Smith chose to run it on a server, which was perhaps an unfortunate choice. The client has "smarts:" it refrains from using system resources unless the system is idle; thus, it has virtually no impact on regular workloads. Nevertheless, it seems likely that it is against OJDFS policy to run most any personal program on a server. Given that this is probably the case, at the absolute WORST, a stern "Don't do that" would more than likely have sufficed. When we it was run -- on servers -- at Cisco Systems (the largest manufacturer of networking equipment in the world), we were merely asked to stop. Period.
So, what happens at OJDFS? He gets fired. Then, to add insult to injury, he gets publicly humiliated by Tom Hayes, the director of OJDFS. Who, if the stories about him on news.google.com are even close to correct, has managed to lose track of OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS [Cincinnati Enquirer,http://tinyurl.com/4uf4d] on his watch. No wonder he's "retiring." I'm just surprised his retirment doesn't involve having his uniform sewn by Marth Stewert.
I live in New Hampshire, and I think it's a great state. However, I went to school in Ohio (Wooster), and thought that Ohio was pretty nice, too... so it saddens me to see someone in power who is obviously trite, incompetent, and petty. Good riddance to Tom, and may the best of luck follow Mr. Smith.
Nope. The "collective wisdom" is that conservatives want less government, but it's not quite true. I'd re-phrase it this way: they don't want to pay for government unless it protects their interests. I learned this the hard way, while working at a bakery 20 years ago: we had a machine that allowed us to dump in eggs by the dozen. It would then spin them really fast, thus cracking the shells, which were held up by a strainer, and then dumping the eggs' contents into a container for the bakery to bake with. Nifty idea, and kept us from having to buy pre-packaged, less-fresh, already-shelled eggs.
Until the owners of the businesses that sold said already-shelled eggs noticed. They, in turn, called up their (republican) congressmen, and screamed that they were losing profit. So, under the guise of "protecting the public's health" [despite the fact that NOT ONE SINGLE CASE of disease/sickness was reported], a law was passed outlawing the nifty egg cracker.
Needless to say, there are zillions of parallels to this lesson in IP-land, deCSS-land, etc. Sadly, it's not just the republicans who stand behind larger gov't to protect interests: the dems are just as bad with the DMCA as the republicans. Just one of the reasons I'm an independent.
Well, it's not speed, per-se, but the vector. Basically, you need to be going (ROUGHLY!) 25K mph at some vector that doesn't intersect with the Earth (and, preferably, avoids its atmosphere, too: see SkyLab).
No, there's no coaching whatsoever. After the great gameshow debacle in the 50's (there's a movie by -- not starring -- Robert Redford about this, which I can't remember the name of), this stuff was clamped down on BIG time. A friend of mine -- super-duper smart -- was on Jeopardy!, and wrote up an article about it at the time. For one, they do it in batches; IIRC, they knock off three shows in one day, and show them MUCH later. (Lots of NDA signage re: the results occurs when you get selected.) While they foster the illusion that it's live, it's not. In addition, while they're friendly with Alex during the game, there's essentially NO mingling at any other time -- no sense of impropriety is wanted or allowed. Etc. Honestly, from his article, it sounded a lot less chummy to be a Jeopardy! participant than it looks like from watching the show.
Well. I guess that there's not much more to say to that, now, is there?