Does free have no value ? Does replacing a product with a cheaper one destroy value ? In the contrary : value is increased by the Shumpeterian process of creative destruction. From the point of view of the consumer, welfare is increased at constant cost. From the point of view of the industrial buyer, production is possible with less capital and at a reduced cost. Capital sunk into obsolete means of production is indeed destroyed, but Joseph Shumpeter has shown that this process of permanent mutation in the industrial fabric actually increases global welfare. The value brought to the consumer by generic drugs is unquestioned. Free software is bringing similar disruption to the software industry, with the added strategic advantage of freeing the consumers from the shackles of lock-in and abuse of market dominance. Detractors of Free software only see the menace that it represents to their interests. They fail to admit the increase in global welfare.
> Apple's Expose was a totally original concept
> that's now been copied by OSS developers.
My Debian desktop system happens to feature a X desktop switcher that shows the contents of windows on all desktops and viewports. Not quite Expose but I would say it sure lies somewhere on the path that leads to it. Rare is the invention that does not stand on the shoulders of someone else.
That's not really a problem because this APT has Super Cow Powers which are roughly equivalent functionnality to the GodLikePowers package. But maybe the apt package should mention 'Provides: godlikepowers'...
Multiple architecture are a good way to make sure that everything is kept clean and generalized. Architecture specific hacks are not acceptable and that's good for everyone. So even thought I only a couple of time used Debian on something other than i386, I think multiple architectures are good for Debian.
> -Dselect needs to be sent to/dev/null
That is you opinion, but I happen to like dselect very much. If you do not like it, you are free to use aptitude or tasksel.
> -Loose the restrictions a little bit
non-free archives are available if you want. For example, deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
He is reimplementing the Remembrance Agent !
on
Nat Demos Dashboard
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The Remembrance Agent is an Emacs add-in that does mostly what Nat's tools seems to be supposed to do : "The Remembrance Agent (RA) is a program which augments human memory by displaying a list of documents which might be relevant to the user's current context. Unlike most information retrieval systems, the RA runs continuously without user intervention. Its unobtrusive interface allows a user to pursue or ignore the RA's suggestions as desired". Nice concept, but since the original is mostly tied to Emacs, a modern implementation would sure be quite welcome.
I live in Paris and tried it a while ago. It works like a charm. The acceleration and deceleration are surprisingly smooth provided you keep your feets on the ground. Then it is exactly like a normal conveyor mat. I like it and I see no drawbacks.
The birds are thawed before being pneumatically propelled into the running engine. It simulates reality better as there are not that many frozen birds cruising up there...
I have used LUFS http://lufs.sourceforge.net/lufs/ for a few weeks and I have found it to be a very nice solution for LAN file sharing. It does not perform so well over high latency links, and I am not yet completely convinced that it behaves well under heavy IO loads although I have not proven the contrary either. So in a nutshell, LuFS is good for general purpose file sharing in a LAN environment and it is giving me entire satisfaction - goodbye Samba !
How much did Slashdot get paid to run this ad ?
on
Review of Sony Clie TG-50
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Are the times so hard that the editors need to accept this kind of half digested press release as article ? No content whatsoever in the article. I believe Slashdot should have a 'products annoucements' section so I can filter out this kind of crap. Critical technical reviews are useful, but the laudatory prose of Sony fanboys is more than I can bear.
It's only worth it if the loss is financially unbearable. In all other cases, you are better off being your own insurer. The only item I consider worthy of an extended warantee is my laptop : I can't work without it and I know from experience that critical laptop parts _always_ fail at some point. Three year laptop warantees have always proven worth their cost so far. But for any other piece of home hardware I always do without it.
Among the "must" features I read : "Some form of bandwidth management scheme to keep network and transfer bandwidth below 95% of the user's link capacity - be it manually configured or some automatic scheme (very important to avoid flooding local connection)". I would have presumed that this functionality has nothing to do with Gnutella and is better left to iptables. I don't even understand how Gnutella is supposed to be aware of what other applications are doing with the link so that it can "keep network and transfer bandwidth below 95% of the user's link capacity". To me this should have been a "should", not a "must".
Barriers to entry are so high that trying to compete is practically impossible. Better spend your money on a partnership with an operator. There are numerous examples of large buildings setting up pico-cells inside to ensure good deep coverage. They most likely cover the hardware and setup costs and let the operators bid for access. Then, the negociation hangs on the demographics of the covered population. If it were good enough the operator would already be there, so that means that you will at best give an operator free access to your network. But then you'll have cell phone coverage. Just keep in mind that each BTS will set you back 100-500k USD, so maybe whata you really want is just a VHF relay and handheld transceivers for your employees.
You may also wish to have a look at PMR networks such as TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio). Many large industrial sites that need mission critical secure mobile coverage have turned to it with much success.
Re:I'll guess I'll admit it..
on
Slashdot over IPv6
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The only solution available to provide Internet access to the hosts on the LAN was to use a private non routable subnet and to masquerade it behind the edge router. NAT also allowed some of these hosts to expose services to the outside world. But this solution has a major drawback : it breaks end to end connectivity and thus complicates the offering of many services that the Internet was meant for. Used like that, NAT is an evil kludge.
IPv6 provides a way out. There certainly are many other advantages in the use of IPv6, but end to end connectivity for the masses is what could have the deepest impact. Think about is : when every single workstation has a routable IPv6 address, everyone will have the potential to serve. This is is what the Internet was meant to be, and actually was in the early days.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, because I very
> well could be. However, isn't it useless
> to run IMAP then. I though IMAP was so your
> email was always stored on an IMAP server and
> then your email client queries the emails upon
> reading them, but your email stays fixed on
> the server until deleted.
No, IMAP is still usefull:
- I can access my whole mail tree through a web interface. And since I use server side filters (Sieve) my mail is always properly sorted.
- I can log on any computer, unpack an IMAP client and I instantly have all my mail handy, with working filters too.
- The backup trick would not work with POP : all messages would be backup up but the archive would grow indefinitely because the deletes on the server would not be reflected on the backup archive.
I run offlineimap from cron on a host at home to keep a backup copy of my mail. It maintains a maildir hierarchy of all my IMAP folders. Setup was quite stratightforward and took me about five minutes. In a word, offlineimap rules !
That's actually a cryptography co-processor on those boards. I could use that ! Giga throughput VPNs, keeping whole partitions encrypted, offloading SSL processing... Bring it on as long as we can write software to exploit that stuff !
Now the real question: will developpers actually be able to peruse this piece of hardware as they fancy, or will there be restrictions ? If the dreaded DRM features can be disabled and the extra silicon put to good use with a couple of nice hacks, then I'm all for it.
Think positive ! Turning useless junk into something fun and/or valuable is what hacking is about, not endlessly complaining about the latest MPAA/Microsoft conspiracy.
Another guy wants to recycle a CDROM player in his audio set. Seen on the debian-user list :
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-us er-200301/msg00942.html
Better get yourself a used CD player on Ebay !
Take inspiration in what the ski resorts do : span large nets in front of the trees. Make sure that the nets slope gently from the ground so that the transition from snow to net is not too rough. To avoid spending on poles, you could even attach one end of the nets to the trees and the other end to the ground ten meters away from the trees. If any hard points remain, make sure they are well envelopped with bales.
The step by step process is extremely simple to follow, even the first time. Sure, hardware autodetection could be a plus and I have never found a use for tasksel and tasksel's idea of what can be useful for a particular task, but I really don't understand why Debian frightens people so much. Agreed, the first time use of dselect requires to read the help screen at least once to remember a handful of keys, but that's all. After that one can enjoy the bliss of installing whole packages and dependancies in very few keystrokes.
But on the other hand, maybe I love Debian too much to see any faults in it.
>The BSA is not hear to make the market more dynamic, they are hear to make more profits for their sponsering organisations.
That's exactly what I said.
> Remember that every piece of viral, comunistic, open source software used is one less sale.
Actually, that's good for the whole market because the ressources not spent on that software can be more efficiently reallocated. It may be bad for whoever sells software, but it's actually good for the rest of the actors.
> Also if you have a competitor who gives his software away for free it forces you to develop new > products / inovations, RnD costs money, therefor less profit.
Sure, but it increase the utility for the consumer, and that's the ultimate goal. Sufferance of a particular actor is meaningless in face of the greater good... It sounds inhumane to some, but it's actually how most societies work.
Taken to a larger scale, this is a classic tactic : flooding the oppressor with so many cases that enforcement of the law becomes impossible, provoking the oppressor into stupid actions. Trivial technical violations are to be favored over full scale confrontation because gradual erosion of the oppression in a non-violent way minimizes the likely damage to the parties. In the case of the DMCA, the battlefield is in the livingroom of the average consumer : the banalization of DMCA violations by consumers defending their right will be the turning point of the struggle. Until that point, open daylight is where everyone should stand to fight : a few activists are easy to control, tens of thousands of normal postings from perfectly legitimate sites all over the network are not. Keep posting comrades !
Slashdot Mirror
Does free have no value ? Does replacing a product with a cheaper one destroy value ? In the contrary : value is increased by the Shumpeterian process of creative destruction. From the point of view of the consumer, welfare is increased at constant cost. From the point of view of the industrial buyer, production is possible with less capital and at a reduced cost. Capital sunk into obsolete means of production is indeed destroyed, but Joseph Shumpeter has shown that this process of permanent mutation in the industrial fabric actually increases global welfare. The value brought to the consumer by generic drugs is unquestioned. Free software is bringing similar disruption to the software industry, with the added strategic advantage of freeing the consumers from the shackles of lock-in and abuse of market dominance. Detractors of Free software only see the menace that it represents to their interests. They fail to admit the increase in global welfare.
Global welfare is the key to the value of Free.
> Wow, now that is funny. In french, caca means poo
> or shit. That guy just created "libshit".
Actually Sam is French, so the humor is completely voluntary.
> that's now been copied by OSS developers.
My Debian desktop system happens to feature a X
desktop switcher that shows the contents of windows
on all desktops and viewports. Not quite Expose
but I would say it sure lies somewhere on the path
that leads to it. Rare is the invention that does not
stand on the shoulders of someone else.
That's not really a problem because this APT has Super Cow Powers which are roughly equivalent functionnality to the GodLikePowers package. But maybe the apt package should mention 'Provides: godlikepowers'...
> -Fork for architectures
/dev/null
Multiple architecture are a good way to make sure that everything is kept clean and generalized. Architecture specific hacks are not acceptable and that's good for everyone. So even thought I only a couple of time used Debian on something other than i386, I think multiple architectures are good for Debian.
> -Dselect needs to be sent to
That is you opinion, but I happen to like dselect very much. If you do not like it, you are free to use aptitude or tasksel.
> -Loose the restrictions a little bit
non-free archives are available if you want. For example,
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
The Remembrance Agent is an Emacs add-in that does mostly what Nat's tools seems to be supposed to do : "The Remembrance Agent (RA) is a program which augments human memory by displaying a list of documents which might be relevant to the user's current context. Unlike most information retrieval systems, the RA runs continuously without user intervention. Its unobtrusive interface allows a user to pursue or ignore the RA's suggestions as desired". Nice concept, but since the original is mostly tied to Emacs, a modern implementation would sure be quite welcome.
I live in Paris and tried it a while ago. It works like a charm. The acceleration and deceleration are surprisingly smooth provided you keep your feets on the ground. Then it is exactly like a normal conveyor mat. I like it and I see no drawbacks.
The birds are thawed before being pneumatically propelled into the running engine. It simulates reality better as there are not that many frozen birds cruising up there...
I have used LUFS http://lufs.sourceforge.net/lufs/ for a few weeks and I have found it to be a very nice solution for LAN file sharing. It does not perform so well over high latency links, and I am not yet completely convinced that it behaves well under heavy IO loads although I have not proven the contrary either. So in a nutshell, LuFS is good for general purpose file sharing in a LAN environment and it is giving me entire satisfaction - goodbye Samba !
Are the times so hard that the editors need to accept this kind of half digested press release as article ? No content whatsoever in the article. I believe Slashdot should have a 'products annoucements' section so I can filter out this kind of crap. Critical technical reviews are useful, but the laudatory prose of Sony fanboys is more than I can bear.
It's only worth it if the loss is financially unbearable. In all other cases, you are better off being your own insurer. The only item I consider worthy of an extended warantee is my laptop : I can't work without it and I know from experience that critical laptop parts _always_ fail at some point. Three year laptop warantees have always proven worth their cost so far. But for any other piece of home hardware I always do without it.
Among the "must" features I read : "Some form of bandwidth management scheme to keep network and transfer bandwidth below 95% of the user's link capacity - be it manually configured or some automatic scheme (very important to avoid flooding local connection)". I would have presumed that this functionality has nothing to do with Gnutella and is better left to iptables. I don't even understand how Gnutella is supposed to be aware of what other applications are doing with the link so that it can "keep network and transfer bandwidth below 95% of the user's link capacity". To me this should have been a "should", not a "must".
Barriers to entry are so high that trying to compete is practically impossible. Better spend your money on a partnership with an operator. There are numerous examples of large buildings setting up pico-cells inside to ensure good deep coverage. They most likely cover the hardware and setup costs and let the operators bid for access. Then, the negociation hangs on the demographics of the covered population. If it were good enough the operator would already be there, so that means that you will at best give an operator free access to your network. But then you'll have cell phone coverage. Just keep in mind that each BTS will set you back 100-500k USD, so maybe whata you really want is just a VHF relay and handheld transceivers for your employees.
You may also wish to have a look at PMR networks such as TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio). Many large industrial sites that need mission critical secure mobile coverage have turned to it with much success.
A Tetra FAQ
A Tetra introduction
The only solution available to provide Internet access to the hosts on the LAN was to use a private non routable subnet and to masquerade it behind the edge router. NAT also allowed some of these hosts to expose services to the outside world. But this solution has a major drawback : it breaks end to end connectivity and thus complicates the offering of many services that the Internet was meant for. Used like that, NAT is an evil kludge.
IPv6 provides a way out. There certainly are many other advantages in the use of IPv6, but end to end connectivity for the masses is what could have the deepest impact. Think about is : when every single workstation has a routable IPv6 address, everyone will have the potential to serve. This is is what the Internet was meant to be, and actually was in the early days.
http://www.sytadin.tm.fr/tempsreel/parisint.gif
http://www.sytadin.tm.fr/
Great time saver, especially with itineraries now being calculated according to the current traffic data.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, because I very
> well could be. However, isn't it useless
> to run IMAP then. I though IMAP was so your
> email was always stored on an IMAP server and
> then your email client queries the emails upon
> reading them, but your email stays fixed on
> the server until deleted.
No, IMAP is still usefull :
- I can access my whole mail tree through a web interface. And since I use server side filters (Sieve) my mail is always properly sorted.
- I can log on any computer, unpack an IMAP client and I instantly have all my mail handy, with working filters too.
- The backup trick would not work with POP : all messages would be backup up but the archive would grow indefinitely because the deletes on the server would not be reflected on the backup archive.
I run offlineimap from cron on a host at home to keep a backup copy of my mail. It maintains a maildir hierarchy of all my IMAP folders. Setup was quite stratightforward and took me about five minutes. In a word, offlineimap rules !
http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/offlineimap/
And it is available in Debian.
That's actually a cryptography co-processor on those boards. I could use that ! Giga throughput VPNs, keeping whole partitions encrypted, offloading SSL processing... Bring it on as long as we can write software to exploit that stuff !
Now the real question: will developpers actually be able to peruse this piece of hardware as they fancy, or will there be restrictions ? If the dreaded DRM features can be disabled and the extra silicon put to good use with a couple of nice hacks, then I'm all for it.
Think positive ! Turning useless junk into something fun and/or valuable is what hacking is about, not endlessly complaining about the latest MPAA/Microsoft conspiracy.
Another guy wants to recycle a CDROM player in his audio set. Seen on the debian-user list : http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-us er-200301/msg00942.html
Better get yourself a used CD player on Ebay !
Take inspiration in what the ski resorts do : span large nets in front of the trees. Make sure that the nets slope gently from the ground so that the transition from snow to net is not too rough. To avoid spending on poles, you could even attach one end of the nets to the trees and the other end to the ground ten meters away from the trees. If any hard points remain, make sure they are well envelopped with bales.
The step by step process is extremely simple to follow, even the first time. Sure, hardware autodetection could be a plus and I have never found a use for tasksel and tasksel's idea of what can be useful for a particular task, but I really don't understand why Debian frightens people so much. Agreed, the first time use of dselect requires to read the help screen at least once to remember a handful of keys, but that's all. After that one can enjoy the bliss of installing whole packages and dependancies in very few keystrokes.
But on the other hand, maybe I love Debian too much to see any faults in it.
Good tip. Mod this up guys !
Too bad, I was feeling like plundering anything I could during the free period...
>The BSA is not hear to make the market more dynamic, they are hear to make more profits for their sponsering organisations.
That's exactly what I said.
> Remember that every piece of viral, comunistic, open source software used is one less sale.
Actually, that's good for the whole market because the ressources not spent on that software can be more efficiently reallocated. It may be bad for whoever sells software, but it's actually good for the rest of the actors.
> Also if you have a competitor who gives his software away for free it forces you to develop new > products / inovations, RnD costs money, therefor less profit.
Sure, but it increase the utility for the consumer, and that's the ultimate goal. Sufferance of a particular actor is meaningless in face of the greater good... It sounds inhumane to some, but it's actually how most societies work.
Taken to a larger scale, this is a classic tactic : flooding the oppressor with so many cases that enforcement of the law becomes impossible, provoking the oppressor into stupid actions. Trivial technical violations are to be favored over full scale confrontation because gradual erosion of the oppression in a non-violent way minimizes the likely damage to the parties. In the case of the DMCA, the battlefield is in the livingroom of the average consumer : the banalization of DMCA violations by consumers defending their right will be the turning point of the struggle. Until that point, open daylight is where everyone should stand to fight : a few activists are easy to control, tens of thousands of normal postings from perfectly legitimate sites all over the network are not. Keep posting comrades !