Why blame on malice what you can blame on stupidity. Sounds more like a royal screw-up than a conscious decision. I mean, the extra load of undesired e-mail probably would cost them several million dollars in bandwidth and storage space. All you sys-admins should know that. Why would they do that for something that the user isn't going to read anyways?
Now, that doesn't make it ok, and I'm sure that some heads are going to roll for that, but I'm sure each person who reads this message has made a royal screw-up in their lifetime. Never blame on malice what you can blame on a moment stupidity.
Now that there are several companies launching satelites, who manages the space? Realisticly, there are a limited number of spots for geosynchronous satelites and they are nearly full. Plus, satelites orbits aren't perpetual (solar wind, collisions with space junk, resistance from the thin but significant atmosphere). Does someone have the right, by treaty (ratified by all "space" countries) to allocate space and lay down "safety" codes? Does anyone supervise the landing of old satelites?
I wonder if the same technology - using interference patterns - could be applied to put a 3000W subwoofer in the palm of your hand -- or in the armrest of you pickup truck.;)
Trouble is, that only works if the owner of the GPL'ed code has the resources and the desire to litigate. Plus, AFAIK, the Gnu GPL has ne'er been tested in court. Remember: it doesn't matter what the liscence is as much as who is behind it. _____________________________________________ ________________
The only thing that annoyed me about the Tux on a chip page was that they attributed the original idea of using a penguin as a centrepiece for Linux to Linus Torvalds. We know that this is not true, that Linus merely endorsed the penguin, and the idea was Larry Ewing. Just a minor detail, but I do like seeing people get credit that is due. ____________________________________________ _________________
I have to admit, I am a little taken aback by your comments. I'm not sure if your comment should merit a reply or if I should dismiss it as a troll.
Instead of harping about freedom of expression, dissidents in eastern european countries suffering under communist oppression should have tried to convince Stalin that free speech would have been beneficial to his goal of unchallenged power over the life and death of millions.
Instead of harping about human rights, the allies should have tried to convince hitler that the mass-extermination of jews was counter-productive to his goal of the instatement of the "aryan race" as the rulers and enslavers of the rest of mankind.
Let me put this in simple terms: A few restrictions in a liscence cannot be compared to the deaths of millions. And a few restrictions in a liscence is not something that can be comared to a human rights violation. Apple opens up their code to some extent. It is not enough for Stallman to be happy. Therefore Apple is no better than Stalin? If Daddy gave you a Volkswagon instead of a Volvo, would you consider him no better than Kim Jong-Il?
Oh yeah, and the fact that Apple cares more about their profits than some ideological arguments for Free Software is every justification for their behaviour. Did you forget that Apple is a business? Would you fault the supermarket for refusing to give food to a starving man if he didn't have the money to pay for it? I sure wouldn't.
Another thing: They developed the software. They can put any liscence on it they please. That is their right. That is their free speach. Richard Stallman has to recognize that. I never did ask Stallman to change his beleifs. But I also was not asking Apple to change their beleifs. Stallman does not have the right to force an "aryan race" of software liscencing on the world, nor should he pretend to.
Just my $0.02 ___________________________________________ __________________
How fast can a plance accellerate before the average business traveller will lose conciousness from the g-force? ________________________________________ _____________________
Maybe it's just me, but I think that Stallman's goals are not anywhere in line with Apple's goals, and Apple is not in the business of Supporting Stallman's idealism.
Really, Stallman is viewing the freedom as the only goal. Apple couldn't care less about your freedom. They care about money. Perhaps if Stallman wants apple to change their liscence, he must appeal to Apple's goals.
Instead of harping on about a termination clause violating some freedom that he holds so high, so should be trying to convince Apple that a termination clause only serves to stifle community development.
Instead harping on about disrespect for privacy, which Apple has no problems with, Stallman should be trying to convince Apple that allowing a company to use their changes internally without publishing will make MacOS a lot more useful in the enterprise.
Instead of harping about central control, Stallman should realize that it won't make a single difference in the community because only releases from Apple will ever get respect from anyone, especially the enterprise.
Stallman, when you review source liscences, you must also consider the perspective of the liscenser, because they are not there to impress you and they don't really care what you think unless you can provide insight that has value to them. ___________________________________________ __________________
After the debut issue of Mamimum Linux I stopped reading it. It seemeed that the magazine had nothing but hype in it anyways. No substance. I was not very impressed with it.
Nonetheless, the magazine business is a pretty tough one. Managazines go up and down all the time. It is very difficult and constly to get a magazine established. If a magazine survives for one year, either it is very well funded, or it has garnered an immediate following.
The only high quality Linux magazine out there is Linux Magazine
Essentially what you have to do is invest a certain amount of money to set up a business, that amount depending on the province you wish to reside in. This business must hire at least on Canadian citizen. Then you need at least 25 "points" (based on age, education, language ability (parlez-vous francais/anglais?), skillset, work experience, adaptibility to Canadian culture, etc). This will get you Entrepreneurial class landed immigrant status.
The normal channels require 70 points, few Canadians could even get 70 points. I could probably just squeak by (I am young, I have a B.Sc., I have family in Canada (of course), but my French is not very good (I can probably read a tech document in French, but that is about all I can do) and I only have one year of experience under my belt.
Once you have landed immigrant status, you must reside in Canada for three years, you write a test (not a difficult one) and take an oath to the Queen. Voila! You are a citizen!
This is not "buying" Canadian citizenship, because all the money you brought with you is still yours.
The requirements for landed immigrant status are not an obsticle for Microsoft to move poeple into Canada, because the majority of their employees qualify to move under NAFTA. __________________________________________ ___________________
Usually when I try to do a script based web site, I separate the presentation from the script as much as possible. I have a flat a HTML document that has special tags that my script searchs for. When the script finds them, she inserts the dynamic content there. This is very easy to do in perl. This way someone else can design the presentation of the web site, and I don't have to worry about him/her breaking my code. Isn't that the proper practice for any other type of programming?
This obviously carries a penalty on the server side, but what do you think represents a better savings for your company? Saving on one server or saving on one web developer?
I wish this question came a month later so that I can plug a general (free (beer and freedom)) implementation of this type of thing that I am working on right now. ____________________________________________ _________________
Tianenmann Square was over ten years ago. China has evolved quite a bit since then. Sorry folks, they can't undo their past mistakes. Many of its once tightly sealed doors have become open to the rest of the world. As "the giant awakes", China's doors will continue to be openned up by the force of the foreign investments in China.
Chinese officials stating that the open source movement is similar to communism actually refers to everyone sharing information and working to everybody's benefit. Star-trek style communism. They weren't refering to any possibility of people being slautered like pigs for revolting against it (other that Bill Gates, maybe:-) ).
Please, the focus of this discussion is China's adoption of Linux, notnotnot China's politics. Please take any discussion of Chinese-style Communism versus Capitalism somewhere else.
Computer software prices will crash when the need for constant upgrades disappears, and this is only a matter of time, leading computer and software expert Linus Torvalds said on Thursday.
I don't think that the need for upgrades will disappear in the near future. There are two reasons for this:
Demands on hardware/software tend to increase to fill the needs.
Remember that developing the software is a human process and a business process. If a company waits until absolutely everything feature imaginable is implemented and the code is tuned to perfection before releasing a product, they will probably miss the market window. So what you will get is a product, maybe the best one on the market), that still leaves room or need for improvement.
Purpose built devices are great, but I think that the future of purpose-built devices will be soft upgradeable as well.
I;ve got a good use for the bandwidth: Netcasting all of the radio and TV stations that the CRTC won't allow because they lack "Canadian Content" Anything that pisses off the CRTC is good for everyone!
(I love seeing Edmonton on the map and not Calgary. Just makes my heart glow)
BTW: Even without the CA*Net3, Canada is still more wired than the USA.
I want to bomb a federal building, but I need to tell my compatriot where the bomb is. I can't tell him without strong encryption because it might incriminate him. But I can't use strong encryption because it is (God help me) illegal.
Uh.. Janet Reno... You're stupid.
Whether it is legal or not it's NOT GOING TO STOP A TERRORIST! It will only hurt the honest uses for encryption.
Great insight as to the path dependency causes of Microsoft's monopoly. However, I do have a probem with the reccommendations.
Reccomentation 1: Microsoft does publish most of their document formats. co the book "Microsoft {Word|Excel} Developer's Handbook" (ISBN's and 1-57231-359-5 for the excel one). These books contain detailed descriptions of their file formats.
Reccomendation 2: The requirement to publish their formats six months in advance would complicate and slow down the software development process and set bad precedents for the industry
Reccomentation 3: There is a requirement for any comany to not sell below cost. Unfortunately, the marginal cost of software is practically nil. What about Corel and Star Division giving away their product free for personal use? This can be vewed as predatory.
We all want to get Microsoft, but we must be careful to avoid hurting the rest of the industry.
Using the DOJ to unwittingly set bad precedents is one way of doing it.
This suggests that all software's top priority is stability/security. Sometimes (especially with in house software and open-source), simply getting something out there that works is more important. Why don't we let the companies set their own priorities instead of having the government do it for them?
I have had the pleasure of installing OpenLinux 2.2 on a customer;s computer (I work at a computer book store in Edmonton, Canada), and I found the installation process to be extremely slick. I was very impressed by the fact that it ran through the cofiguration scripts while Linux was installing, rather than wating until the end, and that it "entertained" the instalee with tetris for the rest of the install. I thought that was very thoughtful.
Unfortunately, they were thoughless enought to leave a severe security hole in it.
This was posted to bugtraq last week:
I believe I've found a bug in the installation process of OpenLinux 2.2 when using the LISA boot disk. During the installation a temporary passwd file is put on the new file system containing the user "help" set uid=0 gid=0 and no password. Once you are prompted to set the root password and default user password a new passwd and shadow file is created yet the help user is left in the shadow file with, you guessed it, no password... Here are the offending entries:
/etc/passwd help:x:0:0:install help user:/:/bin/bash
/etc/shadow help::10709:0:365:7:7::
Anyone who installed OpenLinux 2.2 using the LISA boot disk should check their password file now;-)
(Andrew McRory)
Other than that gross oversight, it's a great product and is a huge step forward in bringing Linux to the masses.
There are many thing that this article fails to address. Most software problems / defects are caused by oppresive schedules and poor project management. Are programmers expected to blow this whistle on this? If they do, they'll likely be fired. In that case project managers should be certified as well. Maybe all managers should be certified to prevent impossible development schedules from being cast onto their developers. But these managers are responding to market forces. Maybe all customers should be certified. That would prevent that. But if their customers are responding to their needs. They need to automate their machines. Well maybe there should be another level of certiciation on the engineers that designed these machines. But these engineers are just trying to stay ahead of the market. Awww screw it. Why don't we require everyone to get a certification to simply breate.
Also, engineers routinely work on projects that people trust their lives to. Software developers rarely do that.
Slashdot Mirror
Why blame on malice what you can blame on stupidity. Sounds more like a royal screw-up than a conscious decision. I mean, the extra load of undesired e-mail probably would cost them several million dollars in bandwidth and storage space. All you sys-admins should know that. Why would they do that for something that the user isn't going to read anyways?
Now, that doesn't make it ok, and I'm sure that some heads are going to roll for that, but I'm sure each person who reads this message has made a royal screw-up in their lifetime. Never blame on malice what you can blame on a moment stupidity.
Now that there are several companies launching satelites, who manages the space? Realisticly, there are a limited number of spots for geosynchronous satelites and they are nearly full. Plus, satelites orbits aren't perpetual (solar wind, collisions with space junk, resistance from the thin but significant atmosphere). Does someone have the right, by treaty (ratified by all "space" countries) to allocate space and lay down "safety" codes? Does anyone supervise the landing of old satelites?
do not look into beam with reamining eye :)
I wonder if the same technology - using interference patterns - could be applied to put a 3000W subwoofer in the palm of your hand -- or in the armrest of you pickup truck. ;)
Trouble is, that only works if the owner of the GPL'ed code has the resources and the desire to litigate. Plus, AFAIK, the Gnu GPL has ne'er been tested in court. Remember: it doesn't matter what the liscence is as much as who is behind it._ ________________
____________________________________________
The only thing that annoyed me about the Tux on a chip page was that they attributed the original idea of using a penguin as a centrepiece for Linux to Linus Torvalds. We know that this is not true, that Linus merely endorsed the penguin, and the idea was Larry Ewing. Just a minor detail, but I do like seeing people get credit that is due._ _________________
___________________________________________
You forget to mention the grep -v foo ~/alanchipwp.ps you needed to get that._ __________________
__________________________________________
Let me put this in simple terms: A few restrictions in a liscence cannot be compared to the deaths of millions. And a few restrictions in a liscence is not something that can be comared to a human rights violation. Apple opens up their code to some extent. It is not enough for Stallman to be happy. Therefore Apple is no better than Stalin? If Daddy gave you a Volkswagon instead of a Volvo, would you consider him no better than Kim Jong-Il?
Oh yeah, and the fact that Apple cares more about their profits than some ideological arguments for Free Software is every justification for their behaviour. Did you forget that Apple is a business? Would you fault the supermarket for refusing to give food to a starving man if he didn't have the money to pay for it? I sure wouldn't.
Another thing: They developed the software. They can put any liscence on it they please. That is their right. That is their free speach. Richard Stallman has to recognize that. I never did ask Stallman to change his beleifs. But I also was not asking Apple to change their beleifs. Stallman does not have the right to force an "aryan race" of software liscencing on the world, nor should he pretend to.
Just my $0.02
__________________________________________
How fast can a plance accellerate before the average business traveller will lose conciousness from the g-force?_ _____________________
_______________________________________
Maybe it's just me, but I think that Stallman's goals are not anywhere in line with Apple's goals, and Apple is not in the business of Supporting Stallman's idealism.
_ __________________
Really, Stallman is viewing the freedom as the only goal. Apple couldn't care less about your freedom. They care about money. Perhaps if Stallman wants apple to change their liscence, he must appeal to Apple's goals.
Instead of harping on about a termination clause violating some freedom that he holds so high, so should be trying to convince Apple that a termination clause only serves to stifle community development.
Instead harping on about disrespect for privacy, which Apple has no problems with, Stallman should be trying to convince Apple that allowing a company to use their changes internally without publishing will make MacOS a lot more useful in the enterprise.
Instead of harping about central control, Stallman should realize that it won't make a single difference in the community because only releases from Apple will ever get respect from anyone, especially the enterprise.
Stallman, when you review source liscences, you must also consider the perspective of the liscenser, because they are not there to impress you and they don't really care what you think unless you can provide insight that has value to them.
__________________________________________
After the debut issue of Mamimum Linux I stopped reading it. It seemeed that the magazine had nothing but hype in it anyways. No substance. I was not very impressed with it.
Nonetheless, the magazine business is a pretty tough one. Managazines go up and down all the time. It is very difficult and constly to get a magazine established. If a magazine survives for one year, either it is very well funded, or it has garnered an immediate following.
The only high quality Linux magazine out there is Linux Magazine
Just my $0.02
_______________________________________________
Essentially what you have to do is invest a certain amount of money to set up a business, that amount depending on the province you wish to reside in. This business must hire at least on Canadian citizen. Then you need at least 25 "points" (based on age, education, language ability (parlez-vous francais/anglais?), skillset, work experience, adaptibility to Canadian culture, etc). This will get you Entrepreneurial class landed immigrant status.
_ ___________________
The normal channels require 70 points, few Canadians could even get 70 points. I could probably just squeak by (I am young, I have a B.Sc., I have family in Canada (of course), but my French is not very good (I can probably read a tech document in French, but that is about all I can do) and I only have one year of experience under my belt.
Once you have landed immigrant status, you must reside in Canada for three years, you write a test (not a difficult one) and take an oath to the Queen. Voila! You are a citizen!
This is not "buying" Canadian citizenship, because all the money you brought with you is still yours.
The requirements for landed immigrant status are not an obsticle for Microsoft to move poeple into Canada, because the majority of their employees qualify to move under NAFTA.
_________________________________________
Usually when I try to do a script based web site, I separate the presentation from the script as much as possible. I have a flat a HTML document that has special tags that my script searchs for. When the script finds them, she inserts the dynamic content there. This is very easy to do in perl. This way someone else can design the presentation of the web site, and I don't have to worry about him/her breaking my code. Isn't that the proper practice for any other type of programming?
_ _________________
This obviously carries a penalty on the server side, but what do you think represents a better savings for your company? Saving on one server or saving on one web developer?
I wish this question came a month later so that I can plug a general (free (beer and freedom)) implementation of this type of thing that I am working on right now.
___________________________________________
I set up a foreign mirror of the offending program. I want to see them come find me and spank me on my own turf...
Tianenmann Square was over ten years ago. China has evolved quite a bit since then. Sorry folks, they can't undo their past mistakes. Many of its once tightly sealed doors have become open to the rest of the world. As "the giant awakes", China's doors will continue to be openned up by the force of the foreign investments in China.
:-) ).
Chinese officials stating that the open source movement is similar to communism actually refers to everyone sharing information and working to everybody's benefit. Star-trek style communism. They weren't refering to any possibility of people being slautered like pigs for revolting against it (other that Bill Gates, maybe
Please, the focus of this discussion is China's adoption of Linux, notnotnot China's politics. Please take any discussion of Chinese-style Communism versus Capitalism somewhere else.
Just my $0.02
I don't think that the need for upgrades will disappear in the near future. There are two reasons for this:
Purpose built devices are great, but I think that the future of purpose-built devices will be soft upgradeable as well.
You know, this first thing I did was grep the list for the word toilet, not having read any of the comments, five hits.
Youp, that was my first impression too.
(Well, they said "for the home....")
I;ve got a good use for the bandwidth: Netcasting all of the radio and TV stations that the CRTC won't allow because they lack "Canadian Content" Anything that pisses off the CRTC is good for everyone!
(I love seeing Edmonton on the map and not Calgary. Just makes my heart glow)
BTW: Even without the CA*Net3, Canada is still more wired than the USA.
I want to bomb a federal building, but I need to tell my compatriot where the bomb is. I can't tell him without strong encryption because it might incriminate him. But I can't use strong encryption because it is (God help me) illegal.
Uh.. Janet Reno... You're stupid.
Whether it is legal or not it's NOT GOING TO STOP A TERRORIST! It will only hurt the honest uses for encryption.
Great insight as to the path dependency causes of Microsoft's monopoly. However, I do have a probem with the reccommendations.
Reccomentation 1: Microsoft does publish most of their document formats. co the book "Microsoft {Word|Excel} Developer's Handbook" (ISBN's and 1-57231-359-5 for the excel one). These books contain detailed descriptions of their file formats.
Reccomendation 2: The requirement to publish their formats six months in advance would complicate and slow down the software development process and set bad precedents for the industry
Reccomentation 3: There is a requirement for any comany to not sell below cost. Unfortunately, the marginal cost of software is practically nil. What about Corel and Star Division giving away their product free for personal use? This can be vewed as predatory.
We all want to get Microsoft, but we must be careful to avoid hurting the rest of the industry.
Using the DOJ to unwittingly set bad precedents is one way of doing it.
This suggests that all software's top priority is stability/security. Sometimes (especially with in house software and open-source), simply getting something out there that works is more important. Why don't we let the companies set their own priorities instead of having the government do it for them?
Unfortunately, they were thoughless enought to leave a severe security hole in it.
This was posted to bugtraq last week:
(Andrew McRory)
Other than that gross oversight, it's a great product and is a huge step forward in bringing Linux to the masses.
There are many thing that this article fails to address. Most software problems / defects are caused by oppresive schedules and poor project management. Are programmers expected to blow this whistle on this? If they do, they'll likely be fired. In that case project managers should be certified as well. Maybe all managers should be certified to prevent impossible development schedules from being cast onto their developers. But these managers are responding to market forces. Maybe all customers should be certified. That would prevent that. But if their customers are responding to their needs. They need to automate their machines. Well maybe there should be another level of certiciation on the engineers that designed these machines. But these engineers are just trying to stay ahead of the market. Awww screw it. Why don't we require everyone to get a certification to simply breate.
Also, engineers routinely work on projects that people trust their lives to. Software developers rarely do that.