The product made by the company where I work has a messaging component. Most, if not all, of our clients get shipped backup tapes of the messages sent and received by their employees. I believe most of our customers are required by the SEC to keep records of this communication. This means that the entire financial industry couldn't use this system.
Regulating agencies aside, I think most companies are more interested in monitoring their employees than they are worried about future lawsuits.
Incidentally, our product address the issue of saying something you'll regret later by having a filter in the program that prevents you from using words like "shit" and "fuck". ("s h i t" and "$hit" go through just fine, though.)
I also wonder how this system would work in England, which IIRC was proposing to make witholding encryption keys a crime.
It's about time we people receieved thanks. Machines have already gotten theirs. From the "I Can Do It!" daily aphorism calendar, Friday November 7, 1997:
I take a moment to express gratitude for the machines in my life that help it run so effortlessly. Thank you, computer, refrigerator, stove, microwave oven, telephone, fax machine, and everything else!
According to this article he's worth $13 billion. I think most of that's on paper in the form of stock and options in Oracle. Whether that's related to the quality of their product is anybody's guess.
Isn't the same thing happening when you release code and Redhat is going to make a ton of money?
I think that an important difference is that RedHat and all the companies trying to make money off GNU/Linux came along after G/L already had come a long way on it's own, thank you very much. Most importantly, the GPL presumably prevents RedHat or anyone else from owning whatever code you contribute.
I think Sun will not have people beating down their door with contributions to the Solaris code base. Aside from the restrictive license that puts developers in a subservient role to Sun, the OS is in a "mature" state. They will suffer a similar fate as Mozilla, which opened its source too late to receive vast outside support.
What's special about Linux is that there is no "inside" or "outside" to the extent that Linux/Alan don't really match up to Sun as a faceless corporation. Time and again, they have shown that their primary interest with Linux is to make a great operating system and not to cut corners. This generosity sets an example to other programmers and encourages development.
Does Sun inspire the same feelings? Would you, as a developer, contribute code knowing that some giant company was going to make tons of money off of your efforts - and if you wanted to do the same, you'd have to pay them royalties?
Sure, people will look and learn from the Solaris code, but when they want to leave a lasting legacy, that'll be through contributing to GNU/Linux. With Solaris, you're still putting your eggs into one basket. What happens to the source code if Sun goes under? You'd have to destroy the internet itself to destroy GNU/Linux, which is available on countless servers.
Streaming video might not be nuke safe, but normal-sized text messages would be. The article said something about traffic being routed through Denmark. Now that's pretty cool, if you ask me.
And as many have said, that's not really a new theme. Now why don't they try a review of a Linux system after it's been installed? Readers might be curious to know what delights await them.
It's logarithmic, and approaching a constant of about 17,000
As a former calculus teacher in grad school, I can't let this slide. Logarithmic curves have no upper limit, though they do grow more and more slowly.
I think there are at least two properties of shared software development that ought to be reflected by any proposed model. First, there is rapid and increasing initial growth, reflecting enthusiasm and growth of the programmer base.
Later the growth in the lines of code will decrease - it's possible that the lines of code will approach an asymptote. The bigger a project gets, the longer it takes a new developer to get comfortable enough to start contributing, and the more careful an experienced developer must be to avoid conflicts. Also, you start getting into the phenomenon of rewriting sections of code to improve modularity, say, which may even decrease the number of lines locally.
For an example model with an asymptote, one might consider the logistic growth model:
dP/dt = k*P(M-P)
where k and M are constants, and P(t) is the number of people involved. M is the maximum population. For small values of P(t), this is similar to exponential (increasing slope), but then it changes to concave down and levels off.
This reminds me of a study that came out a few years ago. (Forgive my poor summary.) I recall it suggested that there was a structural difference in the brains of people who were (assumed to be) homosexual and those who were (assumed to be) heterosexual. (The studies were based on autopsies and they were never able to actually ask the subjects their sexual preference - it was inferred somehow.)
This study caused a stir in the homosexual community because there is a double-edged quality to such a biological marker (assuming it's accurate.) On one hand, many anti-discrimination laws are based on biologically defined qualities such as race, sex, and age. Having a biological definition of homosexuality would give more weight to people trying to get homosexuality included in anti-discrimination laws since it would defeat the argument that homosexuality is a "deviant choice."
On the other hand, many people are afraid of having a biological marker. For example, parents might abort a fetus known to carry that marker. Or it could be part of one's medical record and potentially visible to one's employer, insurer, etc.
Since the Nazis, there has been a stigma against research associating biological qualities with social ones. These two studies (among others) suggest that this stigma is decreasing. That, to me, is the most interesting thing about this article.
You know how technology that was developed by NASA for the space program trickled into the consumer market? Maybe the need for Gideon Bibles in space will prompt someone to develop one of those lightweight, portable, all-purpose document viewers that so many said they wanted in the replies to the other story.
Sorry that was redundant. I searched for "independence" but the other post misspelled it.
To repent, I'll add my joke that suggests that Apple will have to do some big-time lobbying in France to get their products approved. You know those commercials with Jeff Goldblum rambling on about getting on the internet and how life is so cool afterwards? Now imagine Jerry Lewis doing that same thing.
I also want to know if they will have to change the name to the moiLivre to get it approved by the Francophone society...
What's interesting to me about this comment is that it took 3.2 hours to d/l a movie that's about 2 hours long. When that ratio reaches 1:1 or less, what seems like alot of bandwidth now will be nothing, since you'll have lots of high-resolution movies being streamed over the net.
In other words, get cable/dsl now and enjoy the faster responses; it won't last long.
In fact, I'm probably going to go with DSL for the simple reason that BellAtlantic claims it'll be available this month (yeah, right) while TimeWarner Cable is predicting next summer. I'm sure they're both behind schedule, but 9 months ahead sounds good to me. Besides I think the point that I can choose my ISP is a good one. From what I've heard, I guess I'm lucky that I'll have the choice to switch to cable later, should it prove better.
This exact thing happened to me. I connect my Linux box via dial-up to a national ISP so essentially I get a different IP every time. One day I happened to look at/var/adm/messages and noticed a bunch of connection attempts (inetd output.)
It turned out that some twit was scanning the IP range, since a usenet search turned up virtually the same logs from someone else.
Now I don't mind someone casually looking for a web/ftp server or something, but this clown had tried a buffer overflow on NFS or something, so I went after him. One of his connection attempts showed a login name: rolex@(some IP). I tried the same trick: I finger'ed rolex@a.b.n.m, where n and m varied from 1 to 254 or something like that. Sure enough, I found him on a few occasions. Turned out he was running RedHat and several services himself, so I figured he was some ignorant script kid. I checked his ISP's TOS and his behavior appeared to be in violation, so I reported him to them. I never heard from him (or the ISP) again.
Reading some of Teller's ideas - excavating a harbor with nuclear explosions, counteracting global warming with sulphur dioxide particles in the upper atmosphere, I can't help but wonder if Teller would have caught fish by throwing a grenade in a lake.
Let us not forget that brilliance in one area doesn't necessarily imply it in other areas. He may have been a top-notch nuclear physicist, but I'd say he'd have made a lousy civil engineer or environmental scientist.
Agreed - I was suggesting that a company with deep pockets could fund the fight on behalf of some worthy beneficiary. I think that would be in their interest.
The problem with this is that the Coca-cola co. would have the money to bring proper legal power to bear in case the country in question gets all uppity. To the best of my knowledge, Linux does not.
Maybe some of the newly billionaire-ized companies would have a vested interest in protecting the copyrights on the word "Linux".
Your anecdote points out the value of Slashdot and its ilk (nee Usenet) - the comments are often more valuable to the reader than the original article, which is often no more than a spark on the tinder. Try that, "Old" Journalism!
As an aside:
The conversation that follows is part expert commentary, part peer review, and part cocktail-party banter, as credible sources and experts weigh in alongside crackpots in a rapid peer-review process.
The author left out "part childish behavior" (as in 'first post.')
As a second aside, I want to say how tiresome 'first post' is, and yet who will claim they weren't tempted to add that at the bottom of their post? Whenever I feel that temptation, it means I'm not paying enough attention to composing my comment and I go back and look it over again.
Perhaps there could be an option to automatically moderate down the first post if it's from an AC. Then moderators could moderate down non-AC's claiming to be first.
Slashdot Mirror
Regulating agencies aside, I think most companies are more interested in monitoring their employees than they are worried about future lawsuits.
Incidentally, our product address the issue of saying something you'll regret later by having a filter in the program that prevents you from using words like "shit" and "fuck". ("s h i t" and "$hit" go through just fine, though.)
I also wonder how this system would work in England, which IIRC was proposing to make witholding encryption keys a crime.
Here's the low-graphics version, if anyone prefers that.
I take a moment to express gratitude for the machines in my life that help it run so effortlessly. Thank you, computer, refrigerator, stove, microwave oven, telephone, fax machine, and everything else!
I keep that page taped to my monitor at work.
The Carroton will also be offered with an fan that clips over it, called the Carrotop.
No. Tailors help fix breeches.
According to this article he's worth $13 billion. I think most of that's on paper in the form of stock and options in Oracle. Whether that's related to the quality of their product is anybody's guess.
I think that an important difference is that RedHat and all the companies trying to make money off GNU/Linux came along after G/L already had come a long way on it's own, thank you very much. Most importantly, the GPL presumably prevents RedHat or anyone else from owning whatever code you contribute.
What's special about Linux is that there is no "inside" or "outside" to the extent that Linux/Alan don't really match up to Sun as a faceless corporation. Time and again, they have shown that their primary interest with Linux is to make a great operating system and not to cut corners. This generosity sets an example to other programmers and encourages development.
Does Sun inspire the same feelings? Would you, as a developer, contribute code knowing that some giant company was going to make tons of money off of your efforts - and if you wanted to do the same, you'd have to pay them royalties?
Sure, people will look and learn from the Solaris code, but when they want to leave a lasting legacy, that'll be through contributing to GNU/Linux. With Solaris, you're still putting your eggs into one basket. What happens to the source code if Sun goes under? You'd have to destroy the internet itself to destroy GNU/Linux, which is available on countless servers.
Streaming video might not be nuke safe, but normal-sized text messages would be. The article said something about traffic being routed through Denmark. Now that's pretty cool, if you ask me.
And as many have said, that's not really a new theme. Now why don't they try a review of a Linux system after it's been installed? Readers might be curious to know what delights await them.
As a former calculus teacher in grad school, I can't let this slide. Logarithmic curves have no upper limit, though they do grow more and more slowly.
I think there are at least two properties of shared software development that ought to be reflected by any proposed model. First, there is rapid and increasing initial growth, reflecting enthusiasm and growth of the programmer base.
Later the growth in the lines of code will decrease - it's possible that the lines of code will approach an asymptote. The bigger a project gets, the longer it takes a new developer to get comfortable enough to start contributing, and the more careful an experienced developer must be to avoid conflicts. Also, you start getting into the phenomenon of rewriting sections of code to improve modularity, say, which may even decrease the number of lines locally.
For an example model with an asymptote, one might consider the logistic growth model:
dP/dt = k*P(M-P)
where k and M are constants, and P(t) is the number of people involved. M is the maximum population. For small values of P(t), this is similar to exponential (increasing slope), but then it changes to concave down and levels off.
This study caused a stir in the homosexual community because there is a double-edged quality to such a biological marker (assuming it's accurate.) On one hand, many anti-discrimination laws are based on biologically defined qualities such as race, sex, and age. Having a biological definition of homosexuality would give more weight to people trying to get homosexuality included in anti-discrimination laws since it would defeat the argument that homosexuality is a "deviant choice."
On the other hand, many people are afraid of having a biological marker. For example, parents might abort a fetus known to carry that marker. Or it could be part of one's medical record and potentially visible to one's employer, insurer, etc.
Since the Nazis, there has been a stigma against research associating biological qualities with social ones. These two studies (among others) suggest that this stigma is decreasing. That, to me, is the most interesting thing about this article.
You know how technology that was developed by NASA for the space program trickled into the consumer market? Maybe the need for Gideon Bibles in space will prompt someone to develop one of those lightweight, portable, all-purpose document viewers that so many said they wanted in the replies to the other story.
To repent, I'll add my joke that suggests that Apple will have to do some big-time lobbying in France to get their products approved. You know those commercials with Jeff Goldblum rambling on about getting on the internet and how life is so cool afterwards? Now imagine Jerry Lewis doing that same thing.
I also want to know if they will have to change the name to the moiLivre to get it approved by the Francophone society...
Nah, I don't mind. That's my favorite time for watching out the window.
Didn't somone save the world with an Apple laptop in "Independence Day"? Maybe you're onto something here...
In other words, get cable/dsl now and enjoy the faster responses; it won't last long.
In fact, I'm probably going to go with DSL for the simple reason that BellAtlantic claims it'll be available this month (yeah, right) while TimeWarner Cable is predicting next summer. I'm sure they're both behind schedule, but 9 months ahead sounds good to me. Besides I think the point that I can choose my ISP is a good one. From what I've heard, I guess I'm lucky that I'll have the choice to switch to cable later, should it prove better.
It turned out that some twit was scanning the IP range, since a usenet search turned up virtually the same logs from someone else.
Now I don't mind someone casually looking for a web/ftp server or something, but this clown had tried a buffer overflow on NFS or something, so I went after him. One of his connection attempts showed a login name: rolex@(some IP). I tried the same trick: I finger'ed rolex@a.b.n.m, where n and m varied from 1 to 254 or something like that. Sure enough, I found him on a few occasions. Turned out he was running RedHat and several services himself, so I figured he was some ignorant script kid. I checked his ISP's TOS and his behavior appeared to be in violation, so I reported him to them. I never heard from him (or the ISP) again.
And I went to www.rawmen.com looking for noodle recipies...
I hope the USPTO web site database doesn't violate any NCR patents...
Let us not forget that brilliance in one area doesn't necessarily imply it in other areas. He may have been a top-notch nuclear physicist, but I'd say he'd have made a lousy civil engineer or environmental scientist.
Agreed - I was suggesting that a company with deep pockets could fund the fight on behalf of some worthy beneficiary. I think that would be in their interest.
Maybe some of the newly billionaire-ized companies would have a vested interest in protecting the copyrights on the word "Linux".
Unfortunately the latency would suck using satellites.
As an aside:
The conversation that follows is part expert commentary, part peer review, and part cocktail-party banter, as credible sources and experts weigh in alongside crackpots in a rapid peer-review process.
The author left out "part childish behavior" (as in 'first post.')
As a second aside, I want to say how tiresome 'first post' is, and yet who will claim they weren't tempted to add that at the bottom of their post? Whenever I feel that temptation, it means I'm not paying enough attention to composing my comment and I go back and look it over again.
Perhaps there could be an option to automatically moderate down the first post if it's from an AC. Then moderators could moderate down non-AC's claiming to be first.