Actually, I didn't say where their computer science background came from. I happen to be self-educated in computer science, and my software has flown on the space shuttle, it's been used to make movies for Pixar, etc. I've never taken a computer course, but I read a lot of books and got a lot of hands-on experience. I majored in communication arts.
If your site is down over New Years, think seriously about hiring a new IS manager.
There are essentially two kinds of IS managers: those with a solid computer science background, and the other kind. To the other kind, computers are magic, programmers perform an un-understandable task, and what could happen is infinite because they have no rational means of assessing risk. They cover up the fact that they don't understand the computers by using buzzwords and keeping current with all of the trade rags so that they seem to be on top of trends.
If your site can hold up on the average day, it should have no problem this weekend. There will not be a reign of terror by computer criminals (oh yes, if your IS manager calls them "hackers", that's another sign he's not a computer science pro). There will not be unforseen bugs from outside your site that damage you, and if you haven't fixed the inside bugs, well, some dates will be wrong. Big deal. Your backup tapes will not be magically erased on the very shelves where they lie.
You might know I'm the founder and present board member of No-Code International, an organization that has lobbied for the end of code testing.
Morse code is fun and people won't stop using it. But to have a test on copying Morse code by ear required to get any ham license that allows operation below 30 MHz in this day and age is rediculous. The average ham is older than 60, but ham radio should be a resource for young people to learn analog electronics, RF, wide-area networking, etc. I'm hoping that this change will start to address the age gap in ham radio, and I'll be working on a campaign to get young people into the hobby and on to our HF bands.
One of the best things about this decision is that it ends a very ugly acrimonious situation in ham radio that has persisted since 1990, when the no-code VHF license was introduced as the first foot in the door for modernization of ham radio. A lot of the older hams alienated the younger ones because they felt that no-coders weren't real hams. Now, those younger hams will have the same licenses as the older ones, and will be in their faces on the HF bands.
Moderate the above down as redundant please. It's not often that I made two misworded posts, but this story made me that annoyed. I posted a correct one below.
I got so pissed off by this story that I've had to type in this comment three times just to get it right.
I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true for the most part, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again. Did Jeff and Rob decide to fly to California and leave Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter?
The nation of China has not made Linux its official operating system. The story to that effect was a hoax.
The Red Caps are not adopting Red Hat. They never said they were.
One billion communists are not adopting Linux as their platform of choice. That is speculation.
Exactly one thing in the story is true. Red Hat is opening an office and going after the Chinese market, like a lot of other capitalist companies.
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true for the most part, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again.
The nation of China has not made Linux its official operating system. The story to that effect was a hoax.
The Red Caps are not adopting Red Hat.
One billion communists are not adopting Linux as their platform of choice.
Exactly one thing in the story is true. Red Hat is opening an office and going after the Chinese market, like a lot of other companies.
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again. You should know better.
The nation of China has not made Linux its official operating system. The story to that effect was a hoax.
The Red Caps are not adopting Red Hat.
One billion communists are not
Exactly one thing in the story is true. Red Hat is opening an office and going after the Chinese market, like a lot of other companies.
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
Yes, I remember the commercial BSD license, but it's been gone for quite a while now, and it doesn't seem to have changed much. Of the two companies that did at least make an attempt to give back, both wrote their own licenses rather than use the BSD license for their modifications.
And of course the argument is different for X, that's been under a BSD-like license for much longer.
I wouldn't suggest the GPL as a means of "poisoning the BSD water-hole" - that's pejorative. I would suggest the GPL as a means of providing a path for people who prefer to have a license protecting the free-ness of their efforts.
What good is a disclosed-source system that you can't modify? It's good for one thing: you can audit it. However, I'm not sure this works because I don't see why anyone would be interested in auditing such a system. You could pay someone to do it, I guess. I like it more when my heart's in it.
If the API is encumbered, it's not an Open System even if it is published. You still can't program to it.
I reject the notion that View Source in a web browser is Open anything. Sure, you can see it and learn the general principles, but you can't reuse the software at all.
But BSD had networking then. Linux didn't. So you had a choice of IDE disks or networking. I guess most people had IDE disks and no network to connect to.
You are making a common misconception. The GPL does not tell a copyright holder what to do with his own code. The copyright holder can always issue his own code under any license, place his own code into the public domain, etc. It is only other people than the copyright holder to whom the GPL applies. It only tells people what they may do with other people's code.
Right. Remember that Open Systems != Open Source. People still get them confused. Open Systems means the API is documented and someone else can program to the system or application side of that API. It says nothing about the actual software being free or open, generally it's proprietary.
One influential person I know still thinks that Open Source is a subset of the field of Open Systems, and we are constantly in argument about this because I think that Open Source means so much more, and he thinks I am not seeing the forest for the trees.
I just don't buy that. I think the users are following developer mind-share, and Linux still has more of that, and the developers simply don't care if it has a marketable name or not.
By the way, I started running 4BSD in the early 80's, so I'm no stranger to it. I got to NYIT computer graphics lab in 1981, we had one of the first VAXes to get out of DEC (it's the one in Soul of a New Machine) and ran Unix 32V (ATT VAX Unix, I think with no virtual memory) until we got 4BSD. We also had Version 6 Unix on PDP-11 systems. The lab had a V6 paint system application called Images that they never ported to V7. I finally ported 2.8 BSD to the V6 binary API to support that application.
I like the BSD system and might even do some commercial things with it. So please don't take this as anti-BSD propoganda.
1. Time. BSD was held back by the ATT lawsuit and Linux already had so much mindshare when that was over.
2. The BSD license doesn't enforce the quid-pro-quo. This is a real sticking point for me personally. When I put a lot of work into something, I like to be a partner in a free software development, not someone's unpaid employee dupe. But I feel like a dupe when somebody takes that work private, makes proprietary modifications to my work and doesn't return their modifications to me or the other free software authors who gave him our work.
Unfortunately, history shows that without a license requirement the return of code doesn't happen. Most of the workstation Unix systems are BSD-derived (although these days there is more System V in there) and all of their X servers are derived from software under a very similar license to the BSD. Try to get the source code for those systems. Sun only released its modifications to the BSD system recently, 10 years late, and then under a license that would not allow their reincorporation into the BSD system as free software! Most other workstation manufacturers didn't bother to release source at all.
So, I am more likely to put work into a GPL project. It is possible to take the BSD system and GPL it. The new BSD license and the GPL are compatible, and you can GPL all new work that you do, and in general establish a GPL source thread. But that would annoy a lot of the long-time BSD folks.
Hm. Not touching your argument, what filesystems were on disk 2? I did this to a Linux disk once. I wrote a short hack to scan the disk looking for ext2 superblocks (they have a magic number), and then dumped the data from them to recover the partition information. Since ext2 stores redundant superblocks, a kernel hacker like yourself should be able to recover the system if the data is still there at all.
It isn't negligence if you don't fix it instantly. If you have time and opportunity to fix it and you do not, that is what makes it negligence. Otherwise, it's simple liability (which we also disclaim).
In the U.S. I think negligence gets you triple damages in a lawsuit, while simple liability gets you just damages, but IANAL and it's no doubt more complicated than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce
There are essentially two kinds of IS managers: those with a solid computer science background, and the other kind. To the other kind, computers are magic, programmers perform an un-understandable task, and what could happen is infinite because they have no rational means of assessing risk. They cover up the fact that they don't understand the computers by using buzzwords and keeping current with all of the trade rags so that they seem to be on top of trends.
If your site can hold up on the average day, it should have no problem this weekend. There will not be a reign of terror by computer criminals (oh yes, if your IS manager calls them "hackers", that's another sign he's not a computer science pro). There will not be unforseen bugs from outside your site that damage you, and if you haven't fixed the inside bugs, well, some dates will be wrong. Big deal. Your backup tapes will not be magically erased on the very shelves where they lie.
My sites will be up tonight.
Bruce Perens
Morse code is fun and people won't stop using it. But to have a test on copying Morse code by ear required to get any ham license that allows operation below 30 MHz in this day and age is rediculous. The average ham is older than 60, but ham radio should be a resource for young people to learn analog electronics, RF, wide-area networking, etc. I'm hoping that this change will start to address the age gap in ham radio, and I'll be working on a campaign to get young people into the hobby and on to our HF bands.
One of the best things about this decision is that it ends a very ugly acrimonious situation in ham radio that has persisted since 1990, when the no-code VHF license was introduced as the first foot in the door for modernization of ham radio. A lot of the older hams alienated the younger ones because they felt that no-coders weren't real hams. Now, those younger hams will have the same licenses as the older ones, and will be in their faces on the HF bands.
You can read more about this in my editorial The World's Most Silly Technology Law.
Bruce Perens K6BP
Y2K will begin on January 1, 1900!
Bruce
This story really sucks!
There, I said it. It's not just you with a sour taste in your mouth tonight, Pascal.
Bruce
I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true for the most part, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again. Did Jeff and Rob decide to fly to California and leave Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter?
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
Bruce
Oops, this one should have said shame on you Nathan, not Jeff. I must be tired. Moderate as redundant, I'll try _once_ more. Then I'll go to sleep :-)
Bruce
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
Bruce
But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
Bruce
And of course the argument is different for X, that's been under a BSD-like license for much longer.
I wouldn't suggest the GPL as a means of "poisoning the BSD water-hole" - that's pejorative. I would suggest the GPL as a means of providing a path for people who prefer to have a license protecting the free-ness of their efforts.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
If the API is encumbered, it's not an Open System even if it is published. You still can't program to it.
I reject the notion that View Source in a web browser is Open anything. Sure, you can see it and learn the general principles, but you can't reuse the software at all.
Thanks
Bruce
No.
Oops. Open mouth, insert foot :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
One influential person I know still thinks that Open Source is a subset of the field of Open Systems, and we are constantly in argument about this because I think that Open Source means so much more, and he thinks I am not seeing the forest for the trees.
Thanks
Bruce
By the way, I started running 4BSD in the early 80's, so I'm no stranger to it. I got to NYIT computer graphics lab in 1981, we had one of the first VAXes to get out of DEC (it's the one in Soul of a New Machine) and ran Unix 32V (ATT VAX Unix, I think with no virtual memory) until we got 4BSD. We also had Version 6 Unix on PDP-11 systems. The lab had a V6 paint system application called Images that they never ported to V7. I finally ported 2.8 BSD to the V6 binary API to support that application.
Bruce
You weren't at Comdex.
1. Time. BSD was held back by the ATT lawsuit and Linux already had so much mindshare when that was over.
2. The BSD license doesn't enforce the quid-pro-quo. This is a real sticking point for me personally. When I put a lot of work into something, I like to be a partner in a free software development, not someone's unpaid employee dupe. But I feel like a dupe when somebody takes that work private, makes proprietary modifications to my work and doesn't return their modifications to me or the other free software authors who gave him our work.
Unfortunately, history shows that without a license requirement the return of code doesn't happen. Most of the workstation Unix systems are BSD-derived (although these days there is more System V in there) and all of their X servers are derived from software under a very similar license to the BSD. Try to get the source code for those systems. Sun only released its modifications to the BSD system recently, 10 years late, and then under a license that would not allow their reincorporation into the BSD system as free software! Most other workstation manufacturers didn't bother to release source at all.
So, I am more likely to put work into a GPL project. It is possible to take the BSD system and GPL it. The new BSD license and the GPL are compatible, and you can GPL all new work that you do, and in general establish a GPL source thread. But that would annoy a lot of the long-time BSD folks.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
In the U.S. I think negligence gets you triple damages in a lawsuit, while simple liability gets you just damages, but IANAL and it's no doubt more complicated than that.
Thanks
Bruce