Why is everyone questioning the versioning?? Mandrake is *not* RedHat -- they're a very different distro and just because they were originally *based* on RedHat does not mean we should treat them as followers forever. Moreover, they're advance in numbers was nothing like Slackware's. Mandrake went from 6.1 to 7; that's pretty normal versioning. Slack went from like 4.0 to 7.0; that's padding.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Although true a year ago, that statement is just FUD now. Mandrake has come into it's own as a distribution - they're *way* more than just RedHat + KDE now. Have you run Mandrake 7? Do you know for a fact that it's nothing more than RedHat 6? Give these guys a chance; they've done great work in the past.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As for the quality issue, I thought it was funny. Instead of just having a beat-up old record to listen to, now whoever encoded it has a perfectly digital copy of a beat-up old record;) It's like framing a bad picture I guess.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I talked to the guys over there about this and they told me that if they hire anyone, they don't automatically get an Aston Martin... What the hell was emmett doing, getting my hopes up like that?? I had to call long distance!
Of course they do supply their agents with brand new BMWs and turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva... that's almost as good.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Cheapbytes is probably a poor example, because they're a small outfit. A large-scale CD producer could do what they do for a small fraction of the cost. To a point where almost all the price comes from shipping.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Hypocritical? No, there are plenty of people here on Slashdot who agree with your "IP is evil" stance. Well, whether IP is an inherently flawed idea or not is sort of beside the point. It's part of our legal system, and it's something that people all across our country depend on for a source of income.
If you want to go ahead and break those laws because you don't believe in the system - fine, do that. But don't expect me (or the greater part of the world) to back you up.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Yeah, I agree with the other poster at this level -- there's nothing anyone can do to *detect* piracy that pirates can't do to *hide* it as legitimate traffic.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
True enough - To get around that, I set up an old 486 running OpenBSD with a *minimal* installation. It runs 24x7 and makes a great firewall too. And the costs came in at almost nothing; The only thing I had to buy was the two (cheap) Linksys ISA network cards.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Are you serious? If you were on my network, I'd track you down and flog you with a coaxial cable. Just because you don't like how a network is run doesn't give you a right to fsck it up for other users.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I'll tell you what - I downloaded an old Cat Stevens song off Napster last month and I swear it was a copy off a record. You could hear the pops and clicks in the playback... Why anyone would waste the time encoding that sort of thing at 160 kbits is beyond me.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Funny you should mention l0pht. I actually tried to contact their new company @Stake, but they haven't returned my calls. I imagine that's either because 1) they're incompetent (unlikely) or 2) they're swamped because of all the hoopla around their new business -- either way, it's not getting me an audit anytime soon.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
although not valued by most, here are my thoughts:
We see copy protection as being annoying - a tool used by these agencies to keep people from doing something that they're going to do anyway; it just slows them down. I think a lot of times this is the greedy point-of-view. Industries are desperate to hold on to *any* protection they can get, because they're afraid that without it they'll start losing their sales.
And they have good reason to be afraid. If bandwidth and hard drive space continue to increase in size and decrease in price, piracy will explode on the Internet. You think it's bad now, just wait -- you haven't seen anything yet. So here's my take (finally):
Let them implement their protection schemes. Nobody's forcing anyone to use any particular scheme, right? I mean, theoretically a movie producer could release an unencrypted DVD, if they felt so inclined. If you happen to release some work of your own, protect it. Or don't. Make the choice yourself, and allow others to make the choice for themselves with their works. If the unprotected way is really the best way, then it'll come around. Or consumers will vote with their feet -- that's the way the market works.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
What did I just say? The NSA is *not* developing this software. They're not. They have no part in it. It's being done independently by Secure Computing, a company that *sells* software to the NSA and others. W
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
It's hardly impossible to run a stable NT server. In fact, there are plenty of site out there that do so. As for the multi-tasking part, well I've seen my Linux box sieze up under really high loads too, and it's got 128 megs of RAM. It's all about good administration and quality hardware. Yeah, maybe it is easier to run a stable Linux system (I'm not arguing that it isn't) but that doesn't mean Windows can't do it. Besides which, that's hardly an "innovation" - there are plenty of other stable operating systems out there; Linux is not the first by a long shot.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
So, by your definition, the original Apple computer would not be an innovation because, after all, computers have been around much longer than that. A *usable* implementation of an existing idea still counts as "innovation" in my book. I don't see the original Altos as being serious innovation; I see it as inventive. What I do see as innovative is how Microsoft and Apple found markets for Xerox's inventions.
But I'll play by your rules -- How about the WWW? I would definitely call it an "innovation". Sure, the Internet was around much earlier, but web-browsers? Nothing close.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Hmm, think you could give me some more info there? Otherwise, my boss is about to give them the "go ahead" to perform a $15,000 security audit. We're a small company, and that's a lot to spend if we're just getting fleeced.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
This is *not* the NSA we're talking about here. This is a network security company that the NSA happens to buy all their firewall software from. And they don't just service the NSA, either; just today they were trying to sell me on their firewall systems.
My point is this: don't treat this like it's anything other than a regular company. They'll be releasing the source if they make any changes to existing software. They have to. If they don't, they're in violation of the GPL -- and that's a different story altogether.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Well you need to remember that the NSA is actually not doing any of the development here. The Secure Computing people (from the discussion I had with them today) are interested in taking Linux and making it "more secure". What I took that to mean is that they're trying to make it accountable. The fella I spoke with said that Linux was a problem because of it's "Open Nature".
I'm not sure he quite understood what was going on, but the company also works with their own variant of OpenBSD, which is supposedly even more secure than the original due to how they've separated certain sections of the OS from interacting with each-other. I don't claim to be an insider though, this is just what I've been told.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Hehe, sometimes it feels that way -- Seriously, I'm a software developer/system administrator at a small company in Carver, MA. I'm also a student at UMass Boston (in theory anyway).
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I disagree. Maybe this is a semantic issue, but I fail to see how any of that is "innovation". It's great, sure. But is it new? Hardly. Open Source is more old than new. It's only with the advent of popular computing that software has become something to be sold. When hardware was king, lot's of software was shared in source-form.
So yeah, maybe the Open Source community has brought forth a "rediscovery" of quality software design. But where are the innovations? And by "innovation" I mean something new. Something that changes the way you use your computer. Linux hasn't changed the way I use my computer, it's just made it a little easier in some places. Don't let the wild world of the Open Source Extravaganza blind you to what it's really worth.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I actually just talked to these guys on the phone today, regarding performing a security audit of our company. They're really with-it, especially about Open Source stuff. The NSA has been running their software for years now, and now they're moving towards Linux and OpenBSD.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Would you care to point out which law is being broken through this "collective DoS attack"? No ISP is under any legal obligation to carry @Home's newsfeed... They do it out of courtesy, just like everyone else. If @Home is unwilling to put a stop to their spammers then the rest of the Internet will do it for them.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Yes, it is completely legal. No ISP is under any legal obligation to carry another ISP's newsfeeds. It's a cooperative environment with, as-of-yet, no legal enforcement of participation.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Slashdot Mirror
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As for the quality issue, I thought it was funny. Instead of just having a beat-up old record to listen to, now whoever encoded it has a perfectly digital copy of a beat-up old record ;) It's like framing a bad picture I guess.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Of course they do supply their agents with brand new BMWs and turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva... that's almost as good.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
If you want to go ahead and break those laws because you don't believe in the system - fine, do that. But don't expect me (or the greater part of the world) to back you up.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
We see copy protection as being annoying - a tool used by these agencies to keep people from doing something that they're going to do anyway; it just slows them down. I think a lot of times this is the greedy point-of-view. Industries are desperate to hold on to *any* protection they can get, because they're afraid that without it they'll start losing their sales.
And they have good reason to be afraid. If bandwidth and hard drive space continue to increase in size and decrease in price, piracy will explode on the Internet. You think it's bad now, just wait -- you haven't seen anything yet. So here's my take (finally):
Let them implement their protection schemes. Nobody's forcing anyone to use any particular scheme, right? I mean, theoretically a movie producer could release an unencrypted DVD, if they felt so inclined. If you happen to release some work of your own, protect it. Or don't. Make the choice yourself, and allow others to make the choice for themselves with their works. If the unprotected way is really the best way, then it'll come around. Or consumers will vote with their feet -- that's the way the market works.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
But I'll play by your rules -- How about the WWW? I would definitely call it an "innovation". Sure, the Internet was around much earlier, but web-browsers? Nothing close.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
My point is this: don't treat this like it's anything other than a regular company. They'll be releasing the source if they make any changes to existing software. They have to. If they don't, they're in violation of the GPL -- and that's a different story altogether.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I'm not sure he quite understood what was going on, but the company also works with their own variant of OpenBSD, which is supposedly even more secure than the original due to how they've separated certain sections of the OS from interacting with each-other. I don't claim to be an insider though, this is just what I've been told.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
So yeah, maybe the Open Source community has brought forth a "rediscovery" of quality software design. But where are the innovations? And by "innovation" I mean something new. Something that changes the way you use your computer. Linux hasn't changed the way I use my computer, it's just made it a little easier in some places. Don't let the wild world of the Open Source Extravaganza blind you to what it's really worth.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."