But is this really an attempt to combat piracy? I suspect that it is a strategy to encourage it.
If cheap computers already come with Linux installed and a set of applications that meet all the typical user's web browsing and word processing needs, some percentage of users may be tempted to save the $2 for a pirated Windows and stick with Linux. They could then be lost to Microsoft for good. This is the worst scenario for Microsoft. Although they are unlikely to say so publicly, for them a pirated version of Windows is better than a legitimate version of Linux. Any money they get from the crippled Windows is just icing on the cake.
If Brazil stays in the Microsoft fold, they can make the anti-piracy squeeze when the country gets richer. On the other hand, if, at that point, a sizeable proportion of Brazilians are happy with legitimate free software alternatives, a squeeze will likely push more users in the free software direction.
Some of us actually love our country and would rather see the problems with it get fixed rather than just giving up on it and moving elsewhere.
Of course, the country the poster would like to fix was founded by people who did migrate to find a better life.
Re:The whole streaming audio/video field's gone cr
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
On May 1, Hungary will join the EU, which means they have to implement the European Copyright Directive. I think life could get very uncomfortable there for people who write code to circumvent DRM technologies. I am not sure what the situation is in Taiwan, but the general principle seems to be that any country that wants to do business with the US needs some local version of the DMCA.
The way I understood it they are using Zope to implement the repository itself. In this they are more or less following in the footsteps of the Brazilian government:
Content is Not King is a another interesting First Monday article by Andrew Odlyzko. He suggests that Internet use will pan out like the telephone, where the users generate the data transmitted, not some "content" providing mega-corporation. Asymmetical internet connections throttle this development.
As for hampering those evil file-sharing applications. They are most probably the reason why the customer signed up for broadband service in the first place. If all ISPs blocked them, take up rates would probably plummet. Thus, an ISP that allows download but not upload is, in effect, a leech.
Many of the comments here see this as the start of something big in Brazil. In many ways, it is perhaps better to see it as the culmination of a process that has being going on a long time. There have already been free software initiatives at many levels in this the fifth largest country in the world. Most notable of these is in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which hosts each year a major free software event. I also know that in Brasilia itself they have been funding free software development to support, for example, information exchange between all the different legislatures in Brazil.
Moreover, the support for free software would seem to extend across political parties. A workshop I attended in Sao Paulo last year, to encourage cooperation between Latin America and the EU in the IT was explicitly asked to be about free software by the administration preceding that of Lula da Silva. This means the Brazilians already have a wealth of experience in using free software and for finding mechanisms to fund its development. It also means that there are already a lot of firms and administrations that have committed to this process. Some of the comments here have suggested that Microsoft must merely flash out its cheque book to block the push for free software. I think it would have to flash out many cheque books at many levels and would step on the toes of many local interests.
Two other aspects of free software in Brazil do not seem to have received much attention. The first is the wealth of good free software programmers already in Brazil. Several key Zope developers come from Brazil and the first language into which the popular content management system Plone was localised was Brazilian Portuguese. A lot of good work is also going on in free software GIS systems such as SPRING.
The second aspect is represented by the presence in the congress of the Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil. I note that the title of the congress mentions "free software" and not "open source". The interest is not just in economics or software engineering, it is also cultural and extends into other areas, such as the support for creative commons licenses.
Countries that legislate for free / open source software using arguments such as this, that it encourages the local economy at the expense of foreigners, could be accused of being protectionist and not meeting their WTO obligations.
However, you could argue that free / open source software also has an opposite, globalising effect. This is the argument that, inevitably, all the best programmers are not working in your organisation. If you share code development with people all over the world, then you may well get help with your local problem from someone the other side of the planet. Indeed, you do not need to develop local expertise in areas where this is freely available elsewhere. You just concentrate on applying the expertise to your local problem.
There is obviously a good case for charging people more if they use more bandwidth. But as has been mentioned many times on Slashdot in response to similar news about caps, what is the point of broad band if you cannot use it? If the only customers these providers want are people who have the same online behaviour as typical narrow band users, then they have little to offer except shaving a few milliseconds off the download time to reach cnn.com.
If, however, these providers are interested in establishing a long term, expanding market for broadband, they must wish that the whole of the population comes to adopt the behaviour of the "bandwidth hogs", such as listening to high quality internet radio, bulding a virtual workplace at home with VPN, updating software regularly over the net, and exchanging multimedia content.
Moreover, if the providers have cheerfully signed up a lot of users who are clearly interested in broad band mainly to use peer-to-peer file sharing sytems, then by only allowing downloads on these systems and blocking big uploaders, they are, in effect, hypocritical leeches.
The trouble in the NTL case seems to be that they have no real intererst in a long term market for broad band. First, they are bankrupt and cannot plan in any terms longer than the next quarter. Second, they are a cable TV company to whom internet service provision is, at best, a distraction. What we need are companies to step into the market who actually want their customers to use bandwidth, even if, or especially if, it makes cable TV, fixed telephone lines, and normal media distribution channels redundant.
Well with security cameras on every high street, everyone being able to capture you with the video camera built into their mobile phone, all your web presence recorded on the wayback machine, your boss monitoring all your work-based phone and email conversations, and the department of homeland security monitoring the rest, you might as well face the facts: everyone else is recording every step in your life, why should you not get a copy.
Microsoft have a monopoly in desktop operating systems, a monopoly in office suites, and a large chunk of the market for server side software, which they are aggressively trying to expand. You choose Internet Explorer and you extend their monopoly in web browsers.
I do not believe that Bill Gates or Microsoft are the devil incarnate. I do believe they aggressively try to increase their profits and their control over the computing industry, occassionally stepping the wrong side of the law and pouring money into the legislative system to get the laws they want, even if the laws are not optimal for you, the voter. That is just the way 21st century capitalism works.
As the DoJ trial has shown, the browser is a strategically important piece of software. Give Microsoft monopoly control of this area and you can be pretty sure that they will try to extract maximum benefit from it. When there is a conflict between Microsoft's interests and those of the user, the user's interests are likely suffer. And it would be naive to assume such conflicts will not occur. But if you chose to use Internet Explorer when there was a functionally equivalent free software alternative, you have no right to complain. You deserve all you get.
I think there is a case for mentioning the basic principles at stake here, even if they have been discussed on Slashdot before. They are anyway so important that they should be repeated as often as possible. Communications providers should not be liable for content and should not be able to control it. Anything else is dangerous folly.
Horrible crimes are committed using the road and telephone system -- crimes almost as bad as file-swapping, such as murder and rape. But the people responsible for the roads and telephone system are not liable for these crimes. To some extent this a question of practicality -- the telephone operators cannot listen in to all conversations -- but more importantly it hard to see how vetting telephone conversations according to there content is compatible with a democratic society.
But somehow, for some greater good, such as the protecting the five major labels' total control of music distribution, this principle is being abandoned for ISPs. I think this is a slippery slope. In a land such as the US, with so many lawyers and politicians susceptible to lobbyists with big cheque books, is hard to believe that other bodies will not want to tell the ISP's what they can deliver to their customers. I am sure there are other forms of content that could conceivably hurt some company's profit margins.
Even if Americans feel they have to violate the principle of non-liability of communications providers for some overriding greater good then they must surely build in some accountability into the system. Internet communication is becoming so important that the terms of service should be regulated. In particular, they should written in such a way that that ISP service can only be denied when the ISP can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some heinous crime, such mailing a friend a MP3 file, has been committed. Just blocking a port because you think that someone might do something illegal on that port should not be permissible.
In general, however, the principle should be defended that communications providers are in no way liable for what is being communicated and they should not be allowed to tailor their service based on the content. If file-swappers hog bandwidth, use traffic shaping to limit their bandwidth (and put this in the terms of service). ISP's should not be snooping on what private parties communicate amongst themselves or otherwise be making guesses about the use of bandwidth -- at least in a democratic society, which the US makes some pretense of being.
Programmers in the US will be the laughing stock of the world if they can only code within a strictly defined set of parameters that entails very little freedom.
Well, I doubt the laughing will last long. I think you can rest assured that the US would bounce the CBDTPA onto the rest of the world, in the same way it is bouncing the DMCA and software patents onto the EU at the moment. Even areas currently outside the control of the IP barons will not stay so for long. If Russia wants to join the WTO, and given the state of its economy it does not have many options, I think you will see it encouraged to start terrorising its file-swapping citizens and free-software developers like other upstanding countries.
SMALL MANUAL FOR THE HANDICAP OF RAIL TRANSPORT OF ALL KINDS
simply, economically, frequently repeatable
In front: The trackage of the course is gespickt with
Apperaturen, which are to guarantee safe and as smooth a flow of
traffic as possible. Our attention applied to such systems, whose do
not endanger sabotage the security of humans, but nevertheless as much
as possible friction in the flow of traffic to cause - and we would
have something found!
To better understanding small few course customer:
In the railway company the track distances are divided into
individual successive distance paragraph, which are monitored and
secured. Only in each case one course may be in a paragraph!
The security managed over signals and the monitoring runs
over electronic signalling equipment (sensors).
If a course is in a distance paragraph (we call it A), then
the appropriate hauptsignal red shows; that means: Distance
paragraph A is filled, no other course may into this paragraph bring
in.
FIG. 1 (comes still..... sometime)
To the hauptsignal a pilot signal belongs. It displays the
same, like the hauptsignal due to it. (Haupts.=gruen/Vors.=gruen;
Haupts.=rot/Vors.=gelb) and is to 0,6 to 1 km before this.
If a course a yellow occurs pilot signal showing,
Zugfuehrer/die course guide must initiate a braking to come the before
the red hauptsignal showing to a halt.
An electronic determines the current status of a distance
paragraph (fill-free) Achs/Radzaehleinrichtung. It is directly at
the track and counts, how many wheels (and thus axles) at it by-rush.
In the age of the HighTec signals are served naturally not by
push of a button from the signal tower, but by electronics. Different
protection and control systems are used (whereby the description is
limited to those aspects, which are here for us from interest):
a) independent streckenblock (block/lock)
with this system is manufactured technical circuiting a dependency of
the individual protection and control devices among themselves.
Example: Course brings in in distance paragraph A; Signal A switches
to red = paragraph A is filled; Axle counter A counts 18 axles;
Course approaches to distance paragraph B, signal B shows green,
course can in paragraph B bring in; Axle counter B counts 18 axles =
course is in paragraph B brought in = paragraph A left; A is again
free, signal A cut off switches to green; Course approaches paragraph
C...
The basic position of the signals is
green . Only if the paragraph concerned is filled,
the signal red shows.
b) central block with this system is the basic
position of the signals red (even if the
paragraph concerned is free). If a course paragraph A approaches, by
means of an axle counter with the computer of the responsible signal
tower " green for signal A " is requested; this checks whether
somewhat it opposes that and gives if necessary paragraph A freely
(signal A switches to green); with the entry of the course into the
paragraph signal switches A to red; Course approaches paragraph B;
Inquiry; Check;... By observing the signals humans can determine,
after which system the distance is secured. (so e.g. a signal
switching to green can indicate to you that immediately thereafter a
course will come.)
In or if several oh counting devices fail, thereby
Elektronik/dem computer information about the distance status is lost.
The signals concerned switch first times to red and are only by
special instruction to be induced to give this switching status up
again. That has the travel the consequence that the respective
courses must hold first times before the signal, after consultation
with the signal tower responsible for the distance paragraph slowly
and with increased watchfulness to continue and only in the next
distance paragraph - so far this does not announce problems - the
normal travel speed marriages.
Usually are the oh counting devices for both mechanisms in
the same place. There is a multiplicity of further mechanisms for the
protection/monitoring of the trackage. We are limited to two
types of oh counting devices, with their function we here
made ourselves familiar and their sabotage we tested (fig. 2, 3)
FIG. 2.3 (comes still... sometime)
In view of the risk, which a pannekoepfiges, thoughtless
Herumfummeln at course-technical mechanisms catastrophic consequences
can have, we guess/advise dringendst: Devices, whose
regulation/function does not admit exactly is, are taboo!
In addition e.g. the INDUSO for us (inductive strain-relief
counts; Fig. 4), which with security with the search for axle
counters will discover you. They are to be differentiated optically
easily from these; obvious features are i.e. an even,
rectangular surface and its positioning at the track, at the
exterior of the rail with some cm " air " between rail and
device.
FIG. 4 (comes still... sometime)
So, with this little basic knowledge can make you for it on
the search for " your " axle counter. Ideal discovery sites are the
environment of signals on free distance. With bored view from the
compartment window during a course travel now and then signs are
noticeable, which you know similarly from motorway departures: Barks,
with 1,2 and 3 diagonal beam. They indicate the distance to the pilot
signal.
Thus you (probably) the at the beginning of a distance
paragraph sighted. Pays attention to the oberleitungsmasten; they
have continuously sequential numbering, facilitate the later finding
of the place.
A stepping out of the course, the way back and crawling by
the unterholz we leave blank times and assume, it are with
dornenzerkratzten hands and tannennadeln in the hair at the clearing
race in the proximity of " your " place. Take something time to you,
a good workstation and provides there a feeling for the environment
and the traffic conditions looks you up - whereby it is helpful to
have clock and timetable. Then the search begins. With the bored
view from the window, mentioned above, it must have noticed to you
additionally that at the edge of the railway track " boxes " (fig. 5)
are with yellow bases (in the GDR often still grey) - so also, where
you are now. They mostly sit on short tubing stubs rising up out of
the earth.
FIG. 5 (comes still... sometime)
Checks, what in the height such box at the track is. As
orientation a quite thick line (sturdy tank hose serves; see fig.
2+5), which leads from the box to the track. It flows into a device,
which is installed to the rail directly. (that like that, continues
your investigation is not with the next box - there several must be.)
Regard to you the device exactly (however long braking
distances have caution when do gymnasticsdoing gymnastics doing
gymnastics on the tracks, courses!)
The two types of oh counting devices, which we present here,
are quite easy to identify. They see - draufgeguckt from above - from
like trapezoidal steel blocks and are
as unique piece at the inside (fig. 3), or
as doubles at the interior and exterior the same rail (fig.
2)
fastened.
Thus are you at the target of your search!
Now again turns you to the box, because around it it goes.
Boxes, which belong to a " double trapezoid ", are
full-plugged with electronics (slide-in printed-circuit board; Fig. 6
+ 7) FIG. 6 + 7
If the box belongs to a single trapezoid (fig. 5), in a strip
is on which the arriving and outgoing cables are connected.
Which employs it with contents of the respective box, is left
to your fantasy, the pallet is enough from cable by pinching (natural
with isolated tools) to total loss.
Still a few thoughts in the end: If the whole is to go
beyond a purely symbolic ATS, are both the point in time and the range
of the putting out of operation of importance. If it concerns a
completely determined course, which is important to you, the point in
time should be selected in such a way that the course cannot be
rerouted beforehand on another distance.
To be rerouted it knows also always on the Gegengleis to
umfahren the the problem zone - thus: both directions sabotage.
Additionally applies; massive the failures on a distance,
ever, are, the lamely creep the course its target against.
And us sometime times to ears that the marketing department
of the railways puzzles about the cause of a rapidly rising demand for
Bahncards, those should come to observe is in the apron of recruit
collection dates, pushing away feed with deserters from ex Yugoslavia
and refugees at all, peace goods feed, Castor transports and other
ekliges more - if occurs, then we make happy enormous and drink
ourselves one on it (at least).
I think two points are missing in the discussion of the issue of patents and web standards:
Software patents are not going to go away. The reason the W3C gives for putting forward the RAND policy is not without substance. The software world is in the midst of a land grab for lucrative patents. As such, it is inevitable that more and more formats that are used on the web are going to be encumbered by patents. The only question is whether the W3C is going to have a say on these formats. So I do not blame the W3C for putting forward the RAND. I blame legislators that have let software come under the scope of patents, and the voters who put the legislators in place.
Who is promoting patents? The RAND policy would obviously be a kick in the teeth to free software developers. So who is kicking free software? Is it Apple and HP? No. At least, not any longer. Is it that evil Microsoft? No. But it seems from the comments of Bruce Parens that one of the firms doing the kicking is the firm that possesses one of the biggest patent portfolios on the planet, IBM.
To me, the biggest threat to free software is not aggressive marketing tactics by the likes of Microsoft. The biggest threat comes from patents. Given that the voters obviously do not give a damn about software patents and the legislators will follow the lead of whatever lobbyist is sticking cash in their pocket, the only chance of a change in this issue is if a prominent software company were to say they thought that patents did not promote progress in the software industry. Which is why I think that IBM should be given the squeeze.
The free software community should make their concern on the matter clear to the decision makers within IBM. We do not need your trendy advertising campaigns. We do not need your journaling file system, we already have those. We do not even need your expensive Linux labs. What we want is the freedom to code.
IBM and any other company that would like to curry favour with free software developers should have one thing made clear: your cannot, in good conscience, support both free software and software patents.
I can think of several other projects funded by Microsoft that produce GPL'ed code. Some work on the Mercury language, for example, was funded by them. One of the conditions for the cooperation was that "all the support for the.NET platform in the Mercury system will be available on the same terms as the rest of the Mercury system, i.e. open-source under the GPL or LGPL".
This seems all the more ironic since I understand Craig Mundie to be telling the government not to support GPL'ed development. Is Microsoft itself now going to stop research funding for software under such cancerous licenses?
I just loaded this up to my Palm IIIe, which has 2MB memory. I got a little notice saying Pippy really wanted PalmOS 3.5 but it seems to work anyway on my PalmOS 3.3. It requires 250K.
Waba, the stripped down Java VM only requires 74K. But, as the accompanying article says, Python is far nicer language to hack up applications in.
Slashdot Mirror
But is this really an attempt to combat piracy? I suspect that it is a strategy to encourage it.
If cheap computers already come with Linux installed and a set of applications that meet all the typical user's web browsing and word processing needs, some percentage of users may be tempted to save the $2 for a pirated Windows and stick with Linux. They could then be lost to Microsoft for good. This is the worst scenario for Microsoft. Although they are unlikely to say so publicly, for them a pirated version of Windows is better than a legitimate version of Linux. Any money they get from the crippled Windows is just icing on the cake.
If Brazil stays in the Microsoft fold, they can make the anti-piracy squeeze when the country gets richer. On the other hand, if, at that point, a sizeable proportion of Brazilians are happy with legitimate free software alternatives, a squeeze will likely push more users in the free software direction.
for-the-people.org
HINT: I bet Czech schools don't spend millions of dollars (or preferred local currency) on state-of-the-art sports facilities and equipment.
But that is precisely what the number one country, Finland, did.
Of course, the country the poster would like to fix was founded by people who did migrate to find a better life.
On May 1, Hungary will join the EU, which means they have to implement the European Copyright Directive. I think life could get very uncomfortable there for people who write code to circumvent DRM technologies. I am not sure what the situation is in Taiwan, but the general principle seems to be that any country that wants to do business with the US needs some local version of the DMCA.
The way I understood it they are using Zope to implement the repository itself. In this they are more or less following in the footsteps of the Brazilian government:
http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/
-- Alastair
http://www.for-the-people.org/
Content is Not King is a another interesting First Monday article by Andrew Odlyzko. He suggests that Internet use will pan out like the telephone, where the users generate the data transmitted, not some "content" providing mega-corporation. Asymmetical internet connections throttle this development.
As for hampering those evil file-sharing applications. They are most probably the reason why the customer signed up for broadband service in the first place. If all ISPs blocked them, take up rates would probably plummet. Thus, an ISP that allows download but not upload is, in effect, a leech.
for-the-people.org
Many of the comments here see this as the start of something big in
Brazil. In many ways, it is perhaps better to see it as the culmination of
a process that has being going on a long time. There have already been free
software initiatives at many levels in this the fifth largest country in the
world. Most notable of these is in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which
hosts each year a major free software event. I also know that in Brasilia itself they have been
funding free software development to support, for example, information
exchange between all the different legislatures in Brazil.
Moreover, the support for free software would seem to extend across
political parties. A workshop I attended in Sao Paulo last year, to
encourage cooperation between Latin America and the EU in the IT was
explicitly asked to be about free software by the administration preceding
that of Lula da Silva. This means the Brazilians already have a wealth of
experience in using free software and for finding mechanisms to fund its
development. It also means that there are already a lot of firms and
administrations that have committed to this process. Some of the comments
here have suggested that Microsoft must merely flash out its cheque book to
block the push for free software. I think it would have to flash out many
cheque books at many levels and would step on the toes of many local
interests.
Two other aspects of free software in Brazil do not seem to have received
much attention. The first is the wealth of good free software programmers
already in Brazil. Several key Zope developers come from Brazil and the
first language into which the popular content management system Plone was
localised was Brazilian Portuguese. A lot of good work is also going on in
free software GIS systems such as SPRING.
The second aspect is represented by the presence in the congress of the
Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil. I note that the title of the congress
mentions "free software" and not "open source". The interest is not just in
economics or software engineering, it is also cultural and extends into
other areas, such as the support for creative commons
licenses.
Viva Brazil! Viva o software livre!
for-the-people.org
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
The petition itself is a good example of a letter for an MEP and there is a page that will tell you everything you should know on software patents in 15 minutes.
Countries that legislate for free / open source software using arguments such as this, that it encourages the local economy at the expense of foreigners, could be accused of being protectionist and not meeting their WTO obligations.
However, you could argue that free / open source software also has an opposite, globalising effect. This is the argument that, inevitably, all the best programmers are not working in your organisation. If you share code development with people all over the world, then you may well get help with your local problem from someone the other side of the planet. Indeed, you do not need to develop local expertise in areas where this is freely available elsewhere. You just concentrate on applying the expertise to your local problem.
If, however, these providers are interested in establishing a long term, expanding market for broadband, they must wish that the whole of the population comes to adopt the behaviour of the "bandwidth hogs", such as listening to high quality internet radio, bulding a virtual workplace at home with VPN, updating software regularly over the net, and exchanging multimedia content.
Moreover, if the providers have cheerfully signed up a lot of users who are clearly interested in broad band mainly to use peer-to-peer file sharing sytems, then by only allowing downloads on these systems and blocking big uploaders, they are, in effect, hypocritical leeches.
The trouble in the NTL case seems to be that they have no real intererst in a long term market for broad band. First, they are bankrupt and cannot plan in any terms longer than the next quarter. Second, they are a cable TV company to whom internet service provision is, at best, a distraction. What we need are companies to step into the market who actually want their customers to use bandwidth, even if, or especially if, it makes cable TV, fixed telephone lines, and normal media distribution channels redundant.
Well with security cameras on every high street, everyone being able to capture you with the video camera built into their mobile phone, all your web presence recorded on the wayback machine, your boss monitoring all your work-based phone and email conversations, and the department of homeland security monitoring the rest, you might as well face the facts: everyone else is recording every step in your life, why should you not get a copy.
You will find material on all those issues and more on the web site of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. The site is incredibly well researched.
This topic was actually discussed four days ago under the title MS "Software Choice" Campaign: A Clever Fraud. But, of course, it is always good to discuss it again.
Microsoft have a monopoly in desktop operating systems, a monopoly in office suites, and a large chunk of the market for server side software, which they are aggressively trying to expand. You choose Internet Explorer and you extend their monopoly in web browsers.
I do not believe that Bill Gates or Microsoft are the devil incarnate. I do believe they aggressively try to increase their profits and their control over the computing industry, occassionally stepping the wrong side of the law and pouring money into the legislative system to get the laws they want, even if the laws are not optimal for you, the voter. That is just the way 21st century capitalism works.
As the DoJ trial has shown, the browser is a strategically important piece of software. Give Microsoft monopoly control of this area and you can be pretty sure that they will try to extract maximum benefit from it. When there is a conflict between Microsoft's interests and those of the user, the user's interests are likely suffer. And it would be naive to assume such conflicts will not occur. But if you chose to use Internet Explorer when there was a functionally equivalent free software alternative, you have no right to complain. You deserve all you get.
Horrible crimes are committed using the road and telephone system -- crimes almost as bad as file-swapping, such as murder and rape. But the people responsible for the roads and telephone system are not liable for these crimes. To some extent this a question of practicality -- the telephone operators cannot listen in to all conversations -- but more importantly it hard to see how vetting telephone conversations according to there content is compatible with a democratic society.
But somehow, for some greater good, such as the protecting the five major labels' total control of music distribution, this principle is being abandoned for ISPs. I think this is a slippery slope. In a land such as the US, with so many lawyers and politicians susceptible to lobbyists with big cheque books, is hard to believe that other bodies will not want to tell the ISP's what they can deliver to their customers. I am sure there are other forms of content that could conceivably hurt some company's profit margins.
Even if Americans feel they have to violate the principle of non-liability of communications providers for some overriding greater good then they must surely build in some accountability into the system. Internet communication is becoming so important that the terms of service should be regulated. In particular, they should written in such a way that that ISP service can only be denied when the ISP can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some heinous crime, such mailing a friend a MP3 file, has been committed. Just blocking a port because you think that someone might do something illegal on that port should not be permissible.
In general, however, the principle should be defended that communications providers are in no way liable for what is being communicated and they should not be allowed to tailor their service based on the content. If file-swappers hog bandwidth, use traffic shaping to limit their bandwidth (and put this in the terms of service). ISP's should not be snooping on what private parties communicate amongst themselves or otherwise be making guesses about the use of bandwidth -- at least in a democratic society, which the US makes some pretense of being.
For those interested in present and future EU funding in this area the following link is very informative: Free / open source software actions in European programmes.
simply, economically, frequently repeatable
In front: The trackage of the course is gespickt with Apperaturen, which are to guarantee safe and as smooth a flow of traffic as possible. Our attention applied to such systems, whose do not endanger sabotage the security of humans, but nevertheless as much as possible friction in the flow of traffic to cause - and we would have something found!
To better understanding small few course customer:
In the railway company the track distances are divided into individual successive distance paragraph, which are monitored and secured. Only in each case one course may be in a paragraph!
The security managed over signals and the monitoring runs over electronic signalling equipment (sensors).
FIG. 1 (comes still..... sometime)
If a course a yellow occurs pilot signal showing, Zugfuehrer/die course guide must initiate a braking to come the before the red hauptsignal showing to a halt.
The basic position of the signals is green . Only if the paragraph concerned is filled, the signal red shows.
FIG. 2.3 (comes still... sometime)
In view of the risk, which a pannekoepfiges, thoughtless Herumfummeln at course-technical mechanisms catastrophic consequences can have, we guess/advise dringendst: Devices, whose regulation/function does not admit exactly is, are taboo!
In addition e.g. the INDUSO for us (inductive strain-relief counts; Fig. 4), which with security with the search for axle counters will discover you. They are to be differentiated optically easily from these; obvious features are i.e. an even, rectangular surface and its positioning at the track, at the exterior of the rail with some cm " air " between rail and device.
FIG. 4 (comes still... sometime)
So, with this little basic knowledge can make you for it on the search for " your " axle counter. Ideal discovery sites are the environment of signals on free distance. With bored view from the compartment window during a course travel now and then signs are noticeable, which you know similarly from motorway departures: Barks, with 1,2 and 3 diagonal beam. They indicate the distance to the pilot signal.
Thus you (probably) the at the beginning of a distance paragraph sighted. Pays attention to the oberleitungsmasten; they have continuously sequential numbering, facilitate the later finding of the place.
A stepping out of the course, the way back and crawling by the unterholz we leave blank times and assume, it are with dornenzerkratzten hands and tannennadeln in the hair at the clearing race in the proximity of " your " place. Take something time to you, a good workstation and provides there a feeling for the environment and the traffic conditions looks you up - whereby it is helpful to have clock and timetable. Then the search begins. With the bored view from the window, mentioned above, it must have noticed to you additionally that at the edge of the railway track " boxes " (fig. 5) are with yellow bases (in the GDR often still grey) - so also, where you are now. They mostly sit on short tubing stubs rising up out of the earth.
FIG. 5 (comes still... sometime)
Checks, what in the height such box at the track is. As orientation a quite thick line (sturdy tank hose serves; see fig. 2+5), which leads from the box to the track. It flows into a device, which is installed to the rail directly. (that like that, continues your investigation is not with the next box - there several must be.)
Regard to you the device exactly (however long braking distances have caution when do gymnasticsdoing gymnastics doing gymnastics on the tracks, courses!)
The two types of oh counting devices, which we present here, are quite easy to identify. They see - draufgeguckt from above - from like trapezoidal steel blocks and are
- as unique piece at the inside (fig. 3), or
- as doubles at the interior and exterior the same rail (fig.
2)
fastened.Thus are you at the target of your search!
Now again turns you to the box, because around it it goes.
Which employs it with contents of the respective box, is left to your fantasy, the pallet is enough from cable by pinching (natural with isolated tools) to total loss.
Still a few thoughts in the end: If the whole is to go beyond a purely symbolic ATS, are both the point in time and the range of the putting out of operation of importance. If it concerns a completely determined course, which is important to you, the point in time should be selected in such a way that the course cannot be rerouted beforehand on another distance.
To be rerouted it knows also always on the Gegengleis to umfahren the the problem zone - thus: both directions sabotage.
Additionally applies; massive the failures on a distance, ever, are, the lamely creep the course its target against.
And us sometime times to ears that the marketing department of the railways puzzles about the cause of a rapidly rising demand for Bahncards, those should come to observe is in the apron of recruit collection dates, pushing away feed with deserters from ex Yugoslavia and refugees at all, peace goods feed, Castor transports and other ekliges more - if occurs, then we make happy enormous and drink ourselves one on it (at least).
I think two points are missing in the discussion of the issue of patents and web standards:
To me, the biggest threat to free software is not aggressive marketing tactics by the likes of Microsoft. The biggest threat comes from patents. Given that the voters obviously do not give a damn about software patents and the legislators will follow the lead of whatever lobbyist is sticking cash in their pocket, the only chance of a change in this issue is if a prominent software company were to say they thought that patents did not promote progress in the software industry. Which is why I think that IBM should be given the squeeze.
The free software community should make their concern on the matter clear to the decision makers within IBM. We do not need your trendy advertising campaigns. We do not need your journaling file system, we already have those. We do not even need your expensive Linux labs. What we want is the freedom to code.
IBM and any other company that would like to curry favour with free software developers should have one thing made clear: your cannot, in good conscience, support both free software and software patents.
I can think of several other projects funded by Microsoft that produce GPL'ed code. Some work on the Mercury language, for example, was funded by them. One of the conditions for the cooperation was that "all the support for the .NET platform in the Mercury system will be available on the same terms as the rest of the Mercury system, i.e. open-source under the GPL or LGPL".
This seems all the more ironic since I understand Craig Mundie to be telling the government not to support GPL'ed development. Is Microsoft itself now going to stop research funding for software under such cancerous licenses?
It has already been done -- see Squishdot -- and there are quite a few sites running customised versions of it.
The Vaults of Parnassus are where you can find interesting Python applications. There is a sub-vault on audio and music applications.
Pyrite is not a Palm port of Python but a framework for synching desktop apps with Palm apps using Python.
The guys behind the current port had, however, released an alpha version of this about a year ago, IIRC, before they went with the Endeavors firm.
I just loaded this up to my Palm IIIe, which has 2MB memory. I got a little notice saying Pippy really wanted PalmOS 3.5 but it seems to work anyway on my PalmOS 3.3. It requires 250K.
Waba, the stripped down Java VM only requires 74K. But, as the accompanying article says, Python is far nicer language to hack up applications in.