My point was that these are the types of machines that businesses are throwing away today, yet people are still writing software for the machines they threw away three years ago.
I'm typing this from a P200 running Debian Testing. It will run KDE, but it's not fun. You have to remember that memory is the limiting factor in machines such as these. Businesses never upgrade memory. New Dells with P4 processors still come with only 128MB. While Windows 98 would do just fine in 64 megs of RAM, very few graphical environments in Linux will. And a stick of RAM for this machine would cost me more (in time even) than it's worth.
unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect
Of course. That isn't even the issue here. The issue is that most word processors do hard code fonts. GPL fonts almost have to be hard coded because they aren't on the vast majority of machines.
can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?
I'd say yes. Avoiding this end result would have to mean that all programs that use libraries, or, let's say just one library, must be considered derived works of that library, even if only linked dynamically. Think about scripts even; are they derived works of the programs they call?
This would have to hold even for the kernel, or any generic interface for that matter, network protocols even, ipod buttons, sysv headers...
It seems as though the license that found the loophole in copyright has a loophole of its own. Goedel was right.
the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is use. It's not copying.
By your estimate, we all commit copyright violations every time we fire up a program in Windows and it gets copied into RAM, or linked to proprietary Microsoft libraries. Hell, by this estimation, reverse engineering is illegal.
Even though the MS EULA says it gives you permission to make copies of the software in RAM for the purpose of using the software, that's not what gives you this ability. Fair use is what gives you the right to use software you've purchased, just like fair use gives you the right to copy music onto a different format (or to listen to it on players with skip protection), or run ROMs of games that you own in an emulator. CDs don't come with license agreements, do they?
This is only bolstered by the fact that you haven't actually distributed it to anyone else in any of these circumstances. It's all internal, therefore there isn't even a cause of action. Copyright doesn't even apply.
any DERIVED WORKS of GPLed software must also be GPLed.
This is stupid. A derived work of a font is the font itself. It's already well established that the output of running a program can't be considered a "derived work". I believe this concept stems from something called "fair use". The "use" of a font is in creating documents. It has no other use.
What about proprietary fonts and their licenses? Are my documents now property of Adobe and Microsoft because I use their fonts and hence my writings are considered derived works?
Not to mention any document you write can be considered a work in and of itself. It can be displayed with any font. This entire story is stupid.
Accessing the Internet is also possible with a 486; no, you're not going to run the latest browser with your Flash animations and Java applets and beautiful CSS stylesheets and the like, but they're adequate for viewing text-based sites,
Not just text-based sites, either. The Dillo browser runs great even on a 486, probably even with only 16M of RAM, and renders most sites quite well. It doesn't support plugins like flash or java of course, but still makes for a useful web browsing experience.
Where's the Linux distro that turns an old machine into something useful like a kiosk with a webbrowser?
I've kept as much old hardware as anyone here, but honestly I'm sitting here looking at a P100 and wondering what it's still good for. A buddy of mine just threw away (in the dumpster) a bunch of running 300Mhz machines. I really can't blame him. Putting a "text only" linux distro on them isn't at all useful.
I can re-purpose old machines as firewalls and routers all day long (no one cares if those are text-only,) but even that's getting to be a waste of time when I can buy a nice tiny new mini-atx box for $200.
Pretty much everybody except Linus is in agreement that Tridge isn't doing anthing untoward, nothing different from the work he did in writing Samba.
While I agree, there is no "moral" argument to be made here, in fact the situations are different from the perspective of OSS. A more apt analogy could be made to Qt and Trolltech than to Samba.
Bitkeeper exists almost solely to support Linux development. In exchange, Mr. McVoy sells a proprietary version for commercial use in order to support the one he gives away for free for OSS. Having Bitkeeper helps Linux, at the cost of charging for other uses.
Samba, of course, is free to no one. Reverse engineering it helps OSS. It also happens to help everyone else. You could say the situations are the same, but the fact is that Samba won't go away if it's reverse engineered. Bitkeeper very well could. In fact, reverse engineering Samba opened up new opportunities for Linux and OSS. It's doubtful doing the same for Bitkeeper would have the same effect.
If Mr. Tridgell has a personal stake in having a free version of Bitkeeper for commercial use, that's one thing. He should go ahead and reverse it. If, on the other hand, he feels he's helping OSS by reverse engineering Bitkeeper, he's wrong. If I were Larry, I'd do the exact same thing.
its a burden for dial up users to download a 5 MB file
No. No, it isn't. What are your other options? IE? Give me a break. OSS has the best distribution methods in all of computing. Mozilla/Firefox is no exception.
While everyone's preferences are different (I like the separate search bar, but detest the new find dialog), the thing is, they're *preferences*. They should be configurable. Splitting Firefox/Mozilla makes you choose all or nothing, and I'm afraid both products are suffering for it.
What is the long term goal for Firefox and Mozilla? Are we supposed to port the legacy features from the Suite to Firefox one by one? From what I can tell, that isn't happening. People who like the Suite are sticking with the Suite. People who like IE are switching to Firefox. The rest of us are just complaining on Slashdot:)
A flagpole is not called a standard bearer. The person carrying the stick, with or without a flag, was the standard bearer. Roman standards were the sticks, not the flags (although flags were attached). Each Legion had a standard.
The Roman Emperor had the (metaphorical) power to gather the standards (sticks) of his Legions into a bundle, called fasces. The bundle of sticks was a sign of his power. This is the base of the modern term Fascist.
But see how Fedora was ahead of them in all of these areas, and in some still is. That's because the Red Hat team focussed purely on the base distro instead of trying to package everything in the world, which is impossible.
Hi Mike. You make good points. Fedora has done a great job of weeding down a base set of packages and integrating them with the polish they deserve. Linux was sorely in need of this, and all distros will benefit from it.
But to say that Debian's practice of taking "all comers" as packagers is unscalable is factually incorrect. For each package, there is a maintainer. It's even been proposed that each package have two maintainers; and there is still a long line of people willing to be Debian Developers.
If anything, the mess of Fedora's third party repositories should be ample evidence that volunteers will branch out on their own if necessary to package the programs they have interest in. While RedHat has mostly just paid lipservice to it's community with Fedora, Codeweavers is even beginning to make use of the vast potential of a large group of people who, though they may not have coding skills, can make great testers, or packagers, or translators. It's in every distributions' best interests that these people are welcomed and encouraged to work within the distro.
Whittling down the number of packages isn't even on the radar screen for Debian. As others have noted, a majority of Debian developers even reject the notion of whittling down the number of architectures. From what I can tell this is because, while the large number of architectures was a huge burden on Sarge due to the massive work done on the installer, it is not an ongoing problem.
At a certain point, unless you take all comers, someone will always fork your distro to include, say, KDE (Kubuntu). As many of the candidates for DPL have said, Debian needs instead to identify bottlenecks in the processes that hinder progress. This could be the security team. Perhaps security updates should be limited to a segment of packages. This could be space on mirrors. The new bittorrent downloads were quite fast for me, but perhaps other limits can be placed to fix this problem.
Overall, Debian Developers have undying faith in their technical abilities. And, given the proper infrastructure, the number of Debian Developers can grow with no end in sight. Debian seems willing to make the architectural changes to speed up and improve it's release process, and to attract new users and developers. But Debian is rightfully unwilling to sacrifice the Universal OS moniker in order to do so.
being stolen by a better company Debian isn't a company. I don't think Ubuntu is either, but I'm not sure.
Ha! This is the greatest Freudian slip in the whole thread. Ubuntu absofuckinglutely is a company.
Who do you think pays all those Debian developers to work on Ubuntu instead of Sarge? Mark's money will run out sooner or later, but I'm sure he's invested enough in Canonical that when it does run out, they'll be sitting pretty with exclusive control over Ubuntu support.
Meanwhile, Bruce Perens and Ian Murdock have to rethink their businesses based on Debian support. Instead of working with and within the Debian project like Progeny and UserLinux, Canonical has purchased the Debian project and is letting it rot to draw users and developers to Ubuntu. This doesn't bode well either for Debian or for the people who work within the project to make their living, if that living isn't tied to Canonical.
In the end, I'd expect Ubuntu to turn into something like Fedora, with the free distro really only being useful for people who like to upgrade every six months and one company (Canonical) monopolizing support for anyone who needs a longer life, security updates, stability, or even third party software support. That seems to have been their inspiration all along. Everyone but beta testers will get to pay and, if they do it right, Debian will no longer be a viable option. Two birds, one stone.
So far, unfortunately, it seems they are doing it right. Only half of the eligible Debian developers voted for the new DPL. Sarge is way late with no end in sight (it still hasn't even been frozen). And it seems like the process of adding new developers to the project (who might upset the balance of power or actually work to release a stable version) has come to a grinding halt.
Even worse, if work is "made" for them (call centers, gov't jobs), they'll end up using more resources than they would otherwise and could arguably reduce the wealth and/or standard of living.
So basically the idiot who wrote this article is lacking in some analytical skills? (Ironically, he has another article linked to from the page entitled "Can we trust the analysts?" Apparently not.)
Only 27 percent of respondents currently have Linux installed.
Okay, 73% left without Linux.
Almost half of respondents said they had "no interest" in Linux.
We're good here (so far). 27% with Linux, ~50% with no interest, and 23% undecided or with interest in Linux.
Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48 percent have no interest and an additional 15 percent are not sure.
Hold the presses. That means 48% x 73% ~= 36% of the total respondents have no interest (not 50% like above) and 15% x 73% ~= 12% of the total are undecided.
Something doesn't add up. The last statement leaves at least half of the total respondents with interest in Linux or having already deployed it, in direct opposition to the second statement and to his "conclusion". Complete FUD.
Yeah, I'd want to see some security measures in place, like running it in User Mode Linux or something. A dedicated client program like SETI@Home is one thing. A full OS with the capability to fsck with your hardware is another.
which doesn't make them any money.
But it could help save them money. Lots of OSS users have no viable way to contribute back to their favorite projects. Lots of projects could be helped by a vast pool of computing power "on tap". Surely somebody could come up with some interesting applications for a ridiculous amount of free CPU time?
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers... and all other powers... et cetera -- The Constitution
they can also do anything necessary and proper to further the goals of the constitution. -- You
No need to restate it. It's plainly clear that the Constitution is referring to specific powers rather than vague general "goals". It was written in English for a reason, you know, mostly so that statist asshats would have a more difficult time twisting the meaning to justify their ill-conceived extra-constitutional forays.
For months now, since at *least* the first of January. It's mostly been google.com, redirecting to some odd webpage, but not any of the ones listed.
I figured the problem is that I was pointing to an old DNS server for SBC. They won't give you the IPs of the new DNS servers unless you fire up their awful PPPoE program. We use Linux, and this incident has been an excuse to remove the last few Windows computers from the network. It'll probably also be an excuse to rid ourselves of SBC's horrendous services.
Yes, it's technically a router, but has lots of ports, like a switch. It's useful for doing QoS at the IP layer instead of the MAC layer, without having to translate between the two at the endpoints (workstations), which typically have crappy support for MAC layer QoS.
I've had experiences that negate both of these presuppisitions. At the small University where I went, I literally watched the ethernet equipment being installed. I then used it to do most of my assignments via a remote X session to the lab computers, from my dorm room. Professors looked at me dumbfounded when I told them why I wasn't attending labs any more. They wondered what I had "hacked" in order to be able to do that.
When I applied for a job at the same University as Network-something-or-another years later, they wanted someone with Cisco certs. I'm not sure if they even had more than a couple of pieces of Cisco equipment. I wrote a nice cover letter detailing my experience, and how it was not Cisco-specific, but was isomorphic to Cisco-specific concepts. I assumed that they, working for a *University*, would understand the difference between branded jargon and universal concepts. I made a point to ask for quite a bit less than what any self-respecting Cisco certified tech would ask for. I made it clear that I was a quick learner and quite flexible in my capabilities. What I got was a call back asking if I had a Cisco cert:)
On the other hand, though, try asking a professor how encryption works someday. You'll get a basic explanation of how data can be represented as ones and zeros, and by adding a key, you can obfuscate the message, and the receiver can subtract the key to get the original back. Anyone with a tenth grade education can understand that. Hell, most tenth graders could *implement* that. Now, I defy anyone to explain to the average person how to implement this simple concept with, say, OpenSSL, without using a lot of buzzword-laden crap.
There are idiots who know nothing but repeating technical jargon almost everywhere nowadays.
The test for infringement under trademark law is always "likelihood of confusion."
Uh, huh. But the standard of proof is still intent to confuse. The test is only useful in helping to determine whether that intent exists, not whether an offense has occurred. To rule otherwise would place an unlawful burden on speech. Making people surmise all possible interpretations of their speech and its effects on the thoughts of others, before saying it, negates the concept of a right to freedom of speech.
Slashdot Mirror
My point was that these are the types of machines that businesses are throwing away today, yet people are still writing software for the machines they threw away three years ago.
I'm typing this from a P200 running Debian Testing. It will run KDE, but it's not fun. You have to remember that memory is the limiting factor in machines such as these. Businesses never upgrade memory. New Dells with P4 processors still come with only 128MB. While Windows 98 would do just fine in 64 megs of RAM, very few graphical environments in Linux will. And a stick of RAM for this machine would cost me more (in time even) than it's worth.
unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect
Of course. That isn't even the issue here. The issue is that most word processors do hard code fonts. GPL fonts almost have to be hard coded because they aren't on the vast majority of machines.
can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?
I'd say yes. Avoiding this end result would have to mean that all programs that use libraries, or, let's say just one library, must be considered derived works of that library, even if only linked dynamically. Think about scripts even; are they derived works of the programs they call?
This would have to hold even for the kernel, or any generic interface for that matter, network protocols even, ipod buttons, sysv headers...
It seems as though the license that found the loophole in copyright has a loophole of its own. Goedel was right.
the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is use. It's not copying.
By your estimate, we all commit copyright violations every time we fire up a program in Windows and it gets copied into RAM, or linked to proprietary Microsoft libraries. Hell, by this estimation, reverse engineering is illegal.
Even though the MS EULA says it gives you permission to make copies of the software in RAM for the purpose of using the software, that's not what gives you this ability. Fair use is what gives you the right to use software you've purchased, just like fair use gives you the right to copy music onto a different format (or to listen to it on players with skip protection), or run ROMs of games that you own in an emulator. CDs don't come with license agreements, do they?
This is only bolstered by the fact that you haven't actually distributed it to anyone else in any of these circumstances. It's all internal, therefore there isn't even a cause of action. Copyright doesn't even apply.
any DERIVED WORKS of GPLed software must also be GPLed.
This is stupid. A derived work of a font is the font itself. It's already well established that the output of running a program can't be considered a "derived work". I believe this concept stems from something called "fair use". The "use" of a font is in creating documents. It has no other use.
What about proprietary fonts and their licenses? Are my documents now property of Adobe and Microsoft because I use their fonts and hence my writings are considered derived works?
Not to mention any document you write can be considered a work in and of itself. It can be displayed with any font. This entire story is stupid.
Accessing the Internet is also possible with a 486; no, you're not going to run the latest browser with your Flash animations and Java applets and beautiful CSS stylesheets and the like, but they're adequate for viewing text-based sites,
Not just text-based sites, either. The Dillo browser runs great even on a 486, probably even with only 16M of RAM, and renders most sites quite well. It doesn't support plugins like flash or java of course, but still makes for a useful web browsing experience.
Where's the Linux distro that turns an old machine into something useful like a kiosk with a webbrowser?
I've kept as much old hardware as anyone here, but honestly I'm sitting here looking at a P100 and wondering what it's still good for. A buddy of mine just threw away (in the dumpster) a bunch of running 300Mhz machines. I really can't blame him. Putting a "text only" linux distro on them isn't at all useful.
I can re-purpose old machines as firewalls and routers all day long (no one cares if those are text-only,) but even that's getting to be a waste of time when I can buy a nice tiny new mini-atx box for $200.
Having a sig like that brings out the best of Slashdot. They can dish it out, but they can't take it.
While I agree, there is no "moral" argument to be made here, in fact the situations are different from the perspective of OSS. A more apt analogy could be made to Qt and Trolltech than to Samba.
Bitkeeper exists almost solely to support Linux development. In exchange, Mr. McVoy sells a proprietary version for commercial use in order to support the one he gives away for free for OSS. Having Bitkeeper helps Linux, at the cost of charging for other uses.
Samba, of course, is free to no one. Reverse engineering it helps OSS. It also happens to help everyone else. You could say the situations are the same, but the fact is that Samba won't go away if it's reverse engineered. Bitkeeper very well could. In fact, reverse engineering Samba opened up new opportunities for Linux and OSS. It's doubtful doing the same for Bitkeeper would have the same effect.
If Mr. Tridgell has a personal stake in having a free version of Bitkeeper for commercial use, that's one thing. He should go ahead and reverse it. If, on the other hand, he feels he's helping OSS by reverse engineering Bitkeeper, he's wrong. If I were Larry, I'd do the exact same thing.
No. No, it isn't. What are your other options? IE? Give me a break. OSS has the best distribution methods in all of computing. Mozilla/Firefox is no exception.
While everyone's preferences are different (I like the separate search bar, but detest the new find dialog), the thing is, they're *preferences*. They should be configurable. Splitting Firefox/Mozilla makes you choose all or nothing, and I'm afraid both products are suffering for it.
:)
What is the long term goal for Firefox and Mozilla? Are we supposed to port the legacy features from the Suite to Firefox one by one? From what I can tell, that isn't happening. People who like the Suite are sticking with the Suite. People who like IE are switching to Firefox. The rest of us are just complaining on Slashdot
A flagpole is not called a standard bearer. The person carrying the stick, with or without a flag, was the standard bearer. Roman standards were the sticks, not the flags (although flags were attached). Each Legion had a standard.
The Roman Emperor had the (metaphorical) power to gather the standards (sticks) of his Legions into a bundle, called fasces. The bundle of sticks was a sign of his power. This is the base of the modern term Fascist.
/The more you know ->^
"Free as in spyware"
nice. Underrated for sure. if only I had mod points...
Hi Mike. You make good points. Fedora has done a great job of weeding down a base set of packages and integrating them with the polish they deserve. Linux was sorely in need of this, and all distros will benefit from it.
But to say that Debian's practice of taking "all comers" as packagers is unscalable is factually incorrect. For each package, there is a maintainer. It's even been proposed that each package have two maintainers; and there is still a long line of people willing to be Debian Developers.
If anything, the mess of Fedora's third party repositories should be ample evidence that volunteers will branch out on their own if necessary to package the programs they have interest in. While RedHat has mostly just paid lipservice to it's community with Fedora, Codeweavers is even beginning to make use of the vast potential of a large group of people who, though they may not have coding skills, can make great testers, or packagers, or translators. It's in every distributions' best interests that these people are welcomed and encouraged to work within the distro.
Whittling down the number of packages isn't even on the radar screen for Debian. As others have noted, a majority of Debian developers even reject the notion of whittling down the number of architectures. From what I can tell this is because, while the large number of architectures was a huge burden on Sarge due to the massive work done on the installer, it is not an ongoing problem.
At a certain point, unless you take all comers, someone will always fork your distro to include, say, KDE (Kubuntu). As many of the candidates for DPL have said, Debian needs instead to identify bottlenecks in the processes that hinder progress. This could be the security team. Perhaps security updates should be limited to a segment of packages. This could be space on mirrors. The new bittorrent downloads were quite fast for me, but perhaps other limits can be placed to fix this problem.
Overall, Debian Developers have undying faith in their technical abilities. And, given the proper infrastructure, the number of Debian Developers can grow with no end in sight. Debian seems willing to make the architectural changes to speed up and improve it's release process, and to attract new users and developers. But Debian is rightfully unwilling to sacrifice the Universal OS moniker in order to do so.
Debian isn't a company. I don't think Ubuntu is either, but I'm not sure.
Ha! This is the greatest Freudian slip in the whole thread. Ubuntu absofuckinglutely is a company.
Who do you think pays all those Debian developers to work on Ubuntu instead of Sarge? Mark's money will run out sooner or later, but I'm sure he's invested enough in Canonical that when it does run out, they'll be sitting pretty with exclusive control over Ubuntu support.
Meanwhile, Bruce Perens and Ian Murdock have to rethink their businesses based on Debian support. Instead of working with and within the Debian project like Progeny and UserLinux, Canonical has purchased the Debian project and is letting it rot to draw users and developers to Ubuntu. This doesn't bode well either for Debian or for the people who work within the project to make their living, if that living isn't tied to Canonical.
In the end, I'd expect Ubuntu to turn into something like Fedora, with the free distro really only being useful for people who like to upgrade every six months and one company (Canonical) monopolizing support for anyone who needs a longer life, security updates, stability, or even third party software support. That seems to have been their inspiration all along. Everyone but beta testers will get to pay and, if they do it right, Debian will no longer be a viable option. Two birds, one stone.
So far, unfortunately, it seems they are doing it right. Only half of the eligible Debian developers voted for the new DPL. Sarge is way late with no end in sight (it still hasn't even been frozen). And it seems like the process of adding new developers to the project (who might upset the balance of power or actually work to release a stable version) has come to a grinding halt.
Even worse, if work is "made" for them (call centers, gov't jobs), they'll end up using more resources than they would otherwise and could arguably reduce the wealth and/or standard of living.
It'll lead to higher gas prices. Beyond that, it gets kinda foggy...
Only 27 percent of respondents currently have Linux installed.
Okay, 73% left without Linux.
Almost half of respondents said they had "no interest" in Linux.
We're good here (so far). 27% with Linux, ~50% with no interest, and 23% undecided or with interest in Linux.
Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48 percent have no interest and an additional 15 percent are not sure.
Hold the presses. That means 48% x 73% ~= 36% of the total respondents have no interest (not 50% like above) and 15% x 73% ~= 12% of the total are undecided.
Something doesn't add up. The last statement leaves at least half of the total respondents with interest in Linux or having already deployed it, in direct opposition to the second statement and to his "conclusion". Complete FUD.
The actual booting could be controlled locally.
used for a task outside their control
Yeah, I'd want to see some security measures in place, like running it in User Mode Linux or something. A dedicated client program like SETI@Home is one thing. A full OS with the capability to fsck with your hardware is another.
which doesn't make them any money.
But it could help save them money. Lots of OSS users have no viable way to contribute back to their favorite projects. Lots of projects could be helped by a vast pool of computing power "on tap". Surely somebody could come up with some interesting applications for a ridiculous amount of free CPU time?
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers... and all other powers... et cetera -- The Constitution
they can also do anything necessary and proper to further the goals of the constitution. -- You
No need to restate it. It's plainly clear that the Constitution is referring to specific powers rather than vague general "goals". It was written in English for a reason, you know, mostly so that statist asshats would have a more difficult time twisting the meaning to justify their ill-conceived extra-constitutional forays.
Two words: General Welfare
It was determined to be in the best interests of our "general welfare" for Congress to only have a limited, specific set of powers.
For months now, since at *least* the first of January. It's mostly been google.com, redirecting to some odd webpage, but not any of the ones listed.
I figured the problem is that I was pointing to an old DNS server for SBC. They won't give you the IPs of the new DNS servers unless you fire up their awful PPPoE program. We use Linux, and this incident has been an excuse to remove the last few Windows computers from the network. It'll probably also be an excuse to rid ourselves of SBC's horrendous services.
Yes, it's technically a router, but has lots of ports, like a switch. It's useful for doing QoS at the IP layer instead of the MAC layer, without having to translate between the two at the endpoints (workstations), which typically have crappy support for MAC layer QoS.
I've had experiences that negate both of these presuppisitions. At the small University where I went, I literally watched the ethernet equipment being installed. I then used it to do most of my assignments via a remote X session to the lab computers, from my dorm room. Professors looked at me dumbfounded when I told them why I wasn't attending labs any more. They wondered what I had "hacked" in order to be able to do that.
:)
When I applied for a job at the same University as Network-something-or-another years later, they wanted someone with Cisco certs. I'm not sure if they even had more than a couple of pieces of Cisco equipment. I wrote a nice cover letter detailing my experience, and how it was not Cisco-specific, but was isomorphic to Cisco-specific concepts. I assumed that they, working for a *University*, would understand the difference between branded jargon and universal concepts. I made a point to ask for quite a bit less than what any self-respecting Cisco certified tech would ask for. I made it clear that I was a quick learner and quite flexible in my capabilities. What I got was a call back asking if I had a Cisco cert
On the other hand, though, try asking a professor how encryption works someday. You'll get a basic explanation of how data can be represented as ones and zeros, and by adding a key, you can obfuscate the message, and the receiver can subtract the key to get the original back. Anyone with a tenth grade education can understand that. Hell, most tenth graders could *implement* that. Now, I defy anyone to explain to the average person how to implement this simple concept with, say, OpenSSL, without using a lot of buzzword-laden crap.
There are idiots who know nothing but repeating technical jargon almost everywhere nowadays.
Uh, huh. But the standard of proof is still intent to confuse. The test is only useful in helping to determine whether that intent exists, not whether an offense has occurred. To rule otherwise would place an unlawful burden on speech. Making people surmise all possible interpretations of their speech and its effects on the thoughts of others, before saying it, negates the concept of a right to freedom of speech.