You must have missed the story where they zipped DeCSS code and came out with a long prime number. The algorithm to get DeCSS code from this number is unzip (and it's available everywhere). So if the number itself is not illegal, then neither is the decimal displacement from pi. ___
Jobs arent just making copies. Jobs are research, jobs are faster releases, jobs are more
stable releases, jobs are new programs completely, which equates to more money. etc. The
list goes on. This all takes money in the first place.
You can't possibly suggest that the number of jobs would grow anywhere near proportional to the number of copies sold. While what you are saying is partially true, what do you think would create more jobs: an increase in the number of copies of Windows sold or an increase in the number of cars sold?
Possibly, but not neccessarily, that money could end up in a savings account, accruing interest
for a company, or individiual. I'm not sure how this effects the GDP, but it seems reasonable
to think it probably does somehow.
Ah, good thing you asked. GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Export. Also, Investment = Savings (this is non-obvious and I'm not going to try to prove it here, but basically, the money you save banks use to give loans to other people, which they, in turn, use to purchase capital goods). Thus, consumption affects the economy in the short-term, while savings stimulates long-term growth. More on that in Economics 102.
But anyway, the companies' budgets are always stretched thin, and even more so now that there is a recession. Any increase in the operating costs would cause them to lay off workers.
I'm not barking for the BSA. Wait, I am. Kind of. If you use it, you should buy it. If you cant
buy it, you shouldnt use it. But an unauthorised copy doesnt equate to a lost sale. But it still
does equate to a broken law (copyright) and still is prosecutable.
No argument there, but I didn't even get into that discussion. I concentrated only on the economic aspects of piracy. The legal/moral side of the story is a totally different debate altogether. ___
Yes! Yes!!! The BSA propaganda contridicts the simple economic truth: in order for a sale to occur, the buyer must be both willing and able to purchase the good or service. I am willing to buy a Ferrary, but I am not able to do so, therefore the sale does not occur. I am able to buy craft dinner but I am not willing to do so, therefore the sale does not occur. I am neither willing nor able to buy, say, Microsoft Exchange server, therefore the sale does not occur.
Apparently BSA deliberately ignores the simple laws of economics. The difference between the number of copies sold and the number of copies installed does not equal to the number of lost sales. Furthermore, both numbers are estimated, so there is lots of room for creative accounting.
Let's analyze this further. Another claim I often hear is that pirated software causes the loss of jobs: the loss of X revenue due to piracy causes the loss of Y jobs. I really wonder where they got the Y number from. Did they just divide X by the average wage or something? If a software company employs 1000 people and sells 100,000 copies of their software per year, does that mean they'd employ 2000 people if they sold 200,000 copies? How many man-hours does it take to produce another copy of said software? (To be fair, they'd probably need more assembly line workers if the software was packaged in boxes and sold retail, but you get the idea.)
And here is the kicker: pirated software hurts the economy. Surely X dollars lost due to piracy means X dollars less in the GDP (in fact more than X due to the multiplier effect). Here is a newsflash: money does not appear out of thin air. X more dollars spent on software means X less dollars spent on other things. Therefore, if all the piracy was ever erradicated, the software industry would benefit at the expense of all other industries.
Now, let's analyze the last point further. As I showed above, more copies of software sold do not translate into more jobs, since the marginal cost of making another copy of software is virtually zero. However, less units of other goods and services sold would mean less jobs in other industries (example: if people start buyin fewer cars, Ford, GM, et. al. will have to fire workers). Therefore, elimination of piracy would result in a loss of jobs and would make the economy weaker.
This immideatly reminded me of all the "Big Brother is Watching" posters plastered everywhere in the Orwellian society. You can never be sure when you are being watched. So you live in constant fear and anticipate the thought police to come after you any moment. ___
only thing that makes it look expensive now is the utter collapse of the DRAM market. About six months ago, that would
have been a reasonable price for PC133 SDRAM.
I don't know how to break it to you, but the price for *all* memory decreased lately, not just SDRAM. Yet Rambus is still over 4 times the price of SDRAM, just like it always was.
And Rambus has some technical strengths, too, when matched with a chip design like the P4 - the max bandwidth of RDRAM is
higher than equivalent (PC133 DDR) SDRAM, though latency is higher. THe problem with Rambus was twofold:
Bullshit. The bandwidth of 266MHz DDR is 2128 MB/s. The bandwidth of 800MHz Rambus is 1600MB/s. P4 uses two channels of RDRAM, making the total bandwidth 3200MB/s. That's why in P4 you need to install RIMMs in pairs, one for each channel. So the bandwidth of Rambus is less than that of DDR, and on top of that Rambus has much higher latency and generates a lot more heat. RIMMs need heat sinks for crying out loud!
I, for one, have about 100 PCs to buy once there's a product worth buying.
Ahem, Athlon. Or P3 if you are the Intel type (it outperforms P4 you know...)
___
XP is just Windows 2000 with themes and a few other insignificant changes, mostly cosmetic. There are a few bugfixes and
more game compatibility is there, as well.
Not true. Besides cosmetic changes there are a few very significant ones, including but not limited to:
- Mandatory registration (it's been broken recently but it's still there).
- Secure audio path (makes sound encrypted from the moment it's read from HD or CD until it gets to the speakers.
- Bundled "free" software (using the same tactics they used to "cut Netscape's air supply").
- A lobotomized MP3 encoder and a full quality WMA encoder (see WMA sounds better! and it's uhhm secure).
- etc.
All in all, MS is arrogantly continuing to use exact same tactics they were sued for. Now that they already own the browser market, they can give a token consession to remove IE from the desktop. Now they have set their greedy eyes on the music distribution market. Unless something is done to stop them, they'll own that as well, so you'll have to pay Microsoft tax not only on new computers but also every time you listen to a song or watch a movie or print a picture with your digital camera (Gates claims everything will be pay-per-view in not too distant future). So yeah, blocking XP is a good idea. Even more so since the punishment fits the crime. ___
The Mono project will be implementing the Common Language Environment, C# compiler, and the.NET object model
But in order to implement that you'd essentially need to implement COM because.NET is actually based on COM. And COM, in turn, is too tightly tied to OLE and win32 API. So.NET is non-portable by design, unless Microsoft suddenly decided to release all those specs, but somehow I doubt it will ever happen. Besides, nothing prevents Microsoft from embracing and extending its own standard -- so, although you may be able to implement ECMA standard, it would be only a subset of what's required for.NET. Given Microsoft's previous track record, does anyone actually believe that Microsoft is about to start promoting open standards? People, please stop deluding yourself. ___
It's like cancer or some other deadly disease
- you don't have to have any certain political viewpoint to be against it.
And the funny thing is that Microsoft called Open Source software cancer... (as well as virus, pac man, anti-american,...) Hey, they almost went as far as calling it the root of all evil. ___
You are assuming that MS would actually be able to successfully prosecute these guys for reverse engineering. Here's a newsflash: reverse engineering is legal. Europe has neither DMCA nor UCITA. The world is bigger than US. ___
Critics say the program is a response to customers that have not been
upgrading to new versions of software, most notably Office, and a way for
Microsoft to rectify that loss in licensing revenue. Microsoft has reported nearly
$7 billion in revenue in the past three quarters this year for its desktop
applications division, roughly equal to the same three quarters last year. The
revenue accounts for 37 percent of its business, so that means 37 percent of
Microsoft revenue has not grown over the past year.
and, my favourite:
A study by Guernsey Research shows that enterprises on a two-year upgrade
cycle will save 19 percent in licensing costs, but that enterprises on a
three-year cycle will see a 40 percent increase in costs.
No matter what spin MS tries to put on this, it is clear that they tried to milk their customers for all they are worth and the customers rebelled. ___
1. MS fights like mad and lobby's like mad to get the results of Judge
(I-Think-Bill-Gates-Is-Napeleon) Kaplan's trial overturned. Mission: complete.
Ahem, that's Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Kaplan is the guy who heard DeCSS case.
2. In lower court, challenge findings of fact and re-visit the "is or is not a monopoly issue." Mission:
pending.
The appeals court has upheld the findings of facts in full, and most of conclusions of law. They completely threw out only the remedies portion of the ruling. This is what the lower court will now hear -- remedies, not facts. The ruling is actually pretty devastating for MS, but with remedies being retried, MS has won time, and time is of the essence!
3. In the public spectrum, declare Linux/OSS the "number-one threat to Windows/MS in the future".
Mission: complete.
They actually put an even beter spin on this. Open Source is the virus that threatens all businesses. As soon as you use OSS, it infects your business and forces all your code ever written to be released in public domain. So the Microsoft parrot claimed.
4. Related to number 3, reinvigorate claim from first trial that "MS faces significant competition
from outsiders, for example, Linx". See Number 2. Mission: complete.
Yes! But I can't help but to recall Ghandi's words: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Just last year we were at the laughing stage. Now we have definitely entered the fighting stage.
5. Attempt to put into the claim that MS can control market prices. Create an unpopular licensing
scheme and watch customers revolts. Be responsive to those demands. Force the question: "Why would
MS, as a supposed monopoly, be responsive to customer demands/needs? Answer: we have to because
we aren't a monopoly!". Mission: complete.
While this is plausable (and indeed an intriguing idea -- I hadn't thought of that before), I doubt this is what happened. It is more likely that Microsoft simply needs to find a better way to milk their customers now that there are fewer reasons than ever to "upgrade". Also, this trick wouldn't even accomplish what you claim, since the appeals court declared them a monopoly (see above). If anything, it would actually strengthen the argument.
6. Brow-beat friendlier-than-last-time-around DOJ into dropping Sherman claims, plead guilty to
minor technical infractions of business laws. Settle with a relatively minor fine to the Federal
Government. Mission: pending.
DOJ already won most of their claims. Nevertheless, that does not prevent a token settlement.
7. Settle with disheartened states, perhaps filing a motion to break the class due to lack of a favorable
finding of fact. Pick-states off one by one, smallest first with paperwork/smallish settlements.
Mission: pending.
See above. Findings of facts have been upheld in full.
___
Maybe that's because you are using IDE drives. Although you can plug in 2 IDE drives per channel (giving you a total of 4 for 2 channels), only *one* of them can work at a time. While one is working the other one is waiting. Unlike SCSI, the two drives *cannot* share the bandwidth of the IDE channel and work simultaneously. So the only way you can get a linear increase from IDE is if you use two drives on two *different* IDE channels. I suspect that's your problem. ___
and SMT can take full advantage of the smaller RAMBUS latencies
huh? Rambus has much higher latencies than SDRAM. That is why P3 with PC133 SDRAM outperforms the same P3 with Rambus on most benchmars. Since you got this part wrong, I take it the rest of your post should be taken with a grain of salt as well. ___
Essentially what this biolds down to is that the Findings of Fact stand, but the Conclusions of Law (the breakup
order) show evidence of judicial bias, and as such will be submitted to another judge to determine a new conclusion
(ie: may issue a new breakup order, order release of code, pay a fine to gov't, etc.)
Not quite. There are three parts to the original ruling: Findings of Facts, Conclusions of Law, and remedies. The appeals court has vacated _remedies_ only, while both the FOF and COL were left intact. That means that the appeals court agreed that Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behaviour (FOF) *and* that it violated sections the Antitrust act (COL). (or, in english: MS is still a monopoly). A new judge will look at the facts and decide a new remedy. Note that this is not a retrial: only new remedies are considered. Also note that new remedy != lesser remedy (although, I agree, this is likely).
That is actually better news than I had expected. The ruling makes DOJ's position much stronger, since the bulk of their case has survived the appeal intact. It also opens the door for private lawsuits against MS. The plaintiffs in those suites do not need to prove that MS is a monopoly: the feds did it for them, and the appeals court agreed. The only question at this point is: is the DOJ willing to continue? Somehow I suspect I know the answer.... ___
Any
bets on what the will call it for version 2.6 and will it handle stateful inspection?
My guess is they will call it netfilter and it already handles stateful inspection. Oh btw, intead of posting FUD, would you care to point out what your grief with netfilter is? ___
The original license permitted the use of ipf "in binary and in source". I don't see how you can "clarify" that by later stating "yes, it means that modification is not allowed". How else do you use something in source? ___
Did OpenBSD folks base it on the free ipf code that was available before the license change? A license change cannot be retroactive, so the free ipf code cannot be un-released. Therefore, OpenBSD could just take the latest free code and continue from there. Why reinvent the wheel? Or am I missing something? ___
Well, VLIW/EPIC is actually very similar to RISC. The major difference is that a RISC CPU normally does branch prediction, code reordering, etc. (in real time) while VLIW/EPIC relies on a compiler to do it off-line (i.e. not it real time). Thus, theoretically, the ia64 architecture would not suffer pipeline stalls at all, but it does make compilers a whole lot more complicated. Also, relying on a compiler to do what CPU normally does in hardware, (theoretically) makes the CPU less complicated. Well, we'll see how it plays out. So far it's been a rough ride for ia64. It's what 3 years late now? And the Merced err... "Itanium" is just a testing CPU, due to be replaced by McKinly. ___
Any group of companies could just
share apache logs and do some simple Perl analysis to correlate a huge number of visitors. Some factors
like NAT and PPP reduce the effectiveness, but the majority of useful data can still be data-mined.
Cookies are just the lazy way of doing the same thing, as well as providing stateful visits to the sites
themselves.
These things don't "reduce effectiveness" as you say. They make sharing Apache logs absolutely useless. 99.9% of all residential internet connections have dynamic IP addresses. Some of these are semi-static and change once a month or so (like Cable and DSL via DHCP) some change once a day or so (DSL via PPPoE), but the vast majority change all the time (dialup PPP). Therefore, you cannot track someone by just correlating the IP addresses in different web server logs. ___
Unix (and hence Linux) also allows you to have multiple versions of libraries installed. Take a look at/lib and/usr/lib directories some time. You'll see things like:
libfoo.so.x.y
libfoo.so.x
libfoo.so
libfoo.so.x.y is the actual library, and x.y is the major/minor version (it might be x.y.z or whatever). Point is that you can have multiple versions of those installed at the same time. libfoo.so.x and libfoo.so are symbolic liks to the actual library. An application can use either the default library (libfoo.so) or it can specify the version.
DLL hell occurs in Windows precisely because multiple versions of libraries cannot be installed at the same time. So if app1 needs foo.dll version 1.2 and app2 needs version 1.3, one of these will not work. This situation generally does not occur on Unix as long as the library developers bump up the version when they change the API. ___
That's a stupid question. Unlike proprietary OSs, one copy of Linux can be installed on any number of computers, so one CD sold does not correspond to one installation. Heck, you don't even need a CD to install it. On my last job I set up Debian on two machines via ftp. So, counting the number of copies sold would greatly underestimate the number of installations.
A big problem I see with your methodology is that you probably overcount Linux server shipments. From
what I understand (I may be incorrect here) you count each sale of Linux as a server shipment.
So you don't even know if your assumption is correct, but you decide to karma-whore anyway. ___
Sorry for off topic post, but does anyone know what's the deal with Debian releases these days? When do you think woody would be released?
Also, can anyone share their experience running woody? I'm currently using potato on my firewall. Is it safe to upgrade? How about using it on a workstation?
Slashdot Mirror
You must have missed the story where they zipped DeCSS code and came out with a long prime number. The algorithm to get DeCSS code from this number is unzip (and it's available everywhere). So if the number itself is not illegal, then neither is the decimal displacement from pi.
___
You can't possibly suggest that the number of jobs would grow anywhere near proportional to the number of copies sold. While what you are saying is partially true, what do you think would create more jobs: an increase in the number of copies of Windows sold or an increase in the number of cars sold?
Possibly, but not neccessarily, that money could end up in a savings account, accruing interest for a company, or individiual. I'm not sure how this effects the GDP, but it seems reasonable to think it probably does somehow.
Ah, good thing you asked. GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Export. Also, Investment = Savings (this is non-obvious and I'm not going to try to prove it here, but basically, the money you save banks use to give loans to other people, which they, in turn, use to purchase capital goods). Thus, consumption affects the economy in the short-term, while savings stimulates long-term growth. More on that in Economics 102.
But anyway, the companies' budgets are always stretched thin, and even more so now that there is a recession. Any increase in the operating costs would cause them to lay off workers.
I'm not barking for the BSA. Wait, I am. Kind of. If you use it, you should buy it. If you cant buy it, you shouldnt use it. But an unauthorised copy doesnt equate to a lost sale. But it still does equate to a broken law (copyright) and still is prosecutable.
No argument there, but I didn't even get into that discussion. I concentrated only on the economic aspects of piracy. The legal/moral side of the story is a totally different debate altogether.
___
Apparently BSA deliberately ignores the simple laws of economics. The difference between the number of copies sold and the number of copies installed does not equal to the number of lost sales. Furthermore, both numbers are estimated, so there is lots of room for creative accounting.
Let's analyze this further. Another claim I often hear is that pirated software causes the loss of jobs: the loss of X revenue due to piracy causes the loss of Y jobs. I really wonder where they got the Y number from. Did they just divide X by the average wage or something? If a software company employs 1000 people and sells 100,000 copies of their software per year, does that mean they'd employ 2000 people if they sold 200,000 copies? How many man-hours does it take to produce another copy of said software? (To be fair, they'd probably need more assembly line workers if the software was packaged in boxes and sold retail, but you get the idea.)
And here is the kicker: pirated software hurts the economy. Surely X dollars lost due to piracy means X dollars less in the GDP (in fact more than X due to the multiplier effect). Here is a newsflash: money does not appear out of thin air. X more dollars spent on software means X less dollars spent on other things. Therefore, if all the piracy was ever erradicated, the software industry would benefit at the expense of all other industries.
Now, let's analyze the last point further. As I showed above, more copies of software sold do not translate into more jobs, since the marginal cost of making another copy of software is virtually zero. However, less units of other goods and services sold would mean less jobs in other industries (example: if people start buyin fewer cars, Ford, GM, et. al. will have to fire workers). Therefore, elimination of piracy would result in a loss of jobs and would make the economy weaker.
I just love debunkning the BSA propaganda.
___
This immideatly reminded me of all the "Big Brother is Watching" posters plastered everywhere in the Orwellian society. You can never be sure when you are being watched. So you live in constant fear and anticipate the thought police to come after you any moment.
___
I don't know how to break it to you, but the price for *all* memory decreased lately, not just SDRAM. Yet Rambus is still over 4 times the price of SDRAM, just like it always was.
And Rambus has some technical strengths, too, when matched with a chip design like the P4 - the max bandwidth of RDRAM is higher than equivalent (PC133 DDR) SDRAM, though latency is higher. THe problem with Rambus was twofold:
Bullshit. The bandwidth of 266MHz DDR is 2128 MB/s. The bandwidth of 800MHz Rambus is 1600MB/s. P4 uses two channels of RDRAM, making the total bandwidth 3200MB/s. That's why in P4 you need to install RIMMs in pairs, one for each channel. So the bandwidth of Rambus is less than that of DDR, and on top of that Rambus has much higher latency and generates a lot more heat. RIMMs need heat sinks for crying out loud!
I, for one, have about 100 PCs to buy once there's a product worth buying.
Ahem, Athlon. Or P3 if you are the Intel type (it outperforms P4 you know...)
___
Not true. Besides cosmetic changes there are a few very significant ones, including but not limited to:
All in all, MS is arrogantly continuing to use exact same tactics they were sued for. Now that they already own the browser market, they can give a token consession to remove IE from the desktop. Now they have set their greedy eyes on the music distribution market. Unless something is done to stop them, they'll own that as well, so you'll have to pay Microsoft tax not only on new computers but also every time you listen to a song or watch a movie or print a picture with your digital camera (Gates claims everything will be pay-per-view in not too distant future). So yeah, blocking XP is a good idea. Even more so since the punishment fits the crime.
___
Not available in Windows 2000. Care to give more details? BTW, I hate it when moderators decide to give points without checking the facts first.
___
But in order to implement that you'd essentially need to implement COM because .NET is actually based on COM. And COM, in turn, is too tightly tied to OLE and win32 API. So .NET is non-portable by design, unless Microsoft suddenly decided to release all those specs, but somehow I doubt it will ever happen. Besides, nothing prevents Microsoft from embracing and extending its own standard -- so, although you may be able to implement ECMA standard, it would be only a subset of what's required for .NET. Given Microsoft's previous track record, does anyone actually believe that Microsoft is about to start promoting open standards? People, please stop deluding yourself.
___
And the funny thing is that Microsoft called Open Source software cancer... (as well as virus, pac man, anti-american, ...) Hey, they almost went as far as calling it the root of all evil.
___
You are assuming that MS would actually be able to successfully prosecute these guys for reverse engineering. Here's a newsflash: reverse engineering is legal. Europe has neither DMCA nor UCITA. The world is bigger than US.
___
___
Ahem, that's Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Kaplan is the guy who heard DeCSS case.
2. In lower court, challenge findings of fact and re-visit the "is or is not a monopoly issue." Mission: pending.
The appeals court has upheld the findings of facts in full, and most of conclusions of law. They completely threw out only the remedies portion of the ruling. This is what the lower court will now hear -- remedies, not facts. The ruling is actually pretty devastating for MS, but with remedies being retried, MS has won time, and time is of the essence!
3. In the public spectrum, declare Linux/OSS the "number-one threat to Windows/MS in the future". Mission: complete.
They actually put an even beter spin on this. Open Source is the virus that threatens all businesses. As soon as you use OSS, it infects your business and forces all your code ever written to be released in public domain. So the Microsoft parrot claimed.
4. Related to number 3, reinvigorate claim from first trial that "MS faces significant competition from outsiders, for example, Linx". See Number 2. Mission: complete.
Yes! But I can't help but to recall Ghandi's words: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Just last year we were at the laughing stage. Now we have definitely entered the fighting stage.
5. Attempt to put into the claim that MS can control market prices. Create an unpopular licensing scheme and watch customers revolts. Be responsive to those demands. Force the question: "Why would MS, as a supposed monopoly, be responsive to customer demands/needs? Answer: we have to because we aren't a monopoly!". Mission: complete.
While this is plausable (and indeed an intriguing idea -- I hadn't thought of that before), I doubt this is what happened. It is more likely that Microsoft simply needs to find a better way to milk their customers now that there are fewer reasons than ever to "upgrade". Also, this trick wouldn't even accomplish what you claim, since the appeals court declared them a monopoly (see above). If anything, it would actually strengthen the argument.
6. Brow-beat friendlier-than-last-time-around DOJ into dropping Sherman claims, plead guilty to minor technical infractions of business laws. Settle with a relatively minor fine to the Federal Government. Mission: pending.
DOJ already won most of their claims. Nevertheless, that does not prevent a token settlement.
7. Settle with disheartened states, perhaps filing a motion to break the class due to lack of a favorable finding of fact. Pick-states off one by one, smallest first with paperwork/smallish settlements. Mission: pending.
See above. Findings of facts have been upheld in full.
___
Maybe that's because you are using IDE drives. Although you can plug in 2 IDE drives per channel (giving you a total of 4 for 2 channels), only *one* of them can work at a time. While one is working the other one is waiting. Unlike SCSI, the two drives *cannot* share the bandwidth of the IDE channel and work simultaneously. So the only way you can get a linear increase from IDE is if you use two drives on two *different* IDE channels. I suspect that's your problem.
___
huh? Rambus has much higher latencies than SDRAM. That is why P3 with PC133 SDRAM outperforms the same P3 with Rambus on most benchmars. Since you got this part wrong, I take it the rest of your post should be taken with a grain of salt as well.
___
Not quite. There are three parts to the original ruling: Findings of Facts, Conclusions of Law, and remedies. The appeals court has vacated _remedies_ only, while both the FOF and COL were left intact. That means that the appeals court agreed that Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behaviour (FOF) *and* that it violated sections the Antitrust act (COL). (or, in english: MS is still a monopoly). A new judge will look at the facts and decide a new remedy. Note that this is not a retrial: only new remedies are considered. Also note that new remedy != lesser remedy (although, I agree, this is likely).
That is actually better news than I had expected. The ruling makes DOJ's position much stronger, since the bulk of their case has survived the appeal intact. It also opens the door for private lawsuits against MS. The plaintiffs in those suites do not need to prove that MS is a monopoly: the feds did it for them, and the appeals court agreed. The only question at this point is: is the DOJ willing to continue? Somehow I suspect I know the answer....
___
Yes, it went something like this: you don't release Mac OS for x86 and nobody gets hurt.
___
My guess is they will call it netfilter and it already handles stateful inspection. Oh btw, intead of posting FUD, would you care to point out what your grief with netfilter is?
___
The original license permitted the use of ipf "in binary and in source". I don't see how you can "clarify" that by later stating "yes, it means that modification is not allowed". How else do you use something in source?
___
Did OpenBSD folks base it on the free ipf code that was available before the license change? A license change cannot be retroactive, so the free ipf code cannot be un-released. Therefore, OpenBSD could just take the latest free code and continue from there. Why reinvent the wheel? Or am I missing something?
___
Well, VLIW/EPIC is actually very similar to RISC. The major difference is that a RISC CPU normally does branch prediction, code reordering, etc. (in real time) while VLIW/EPIC relies on a compiler to do it off-line (i.e. not it real time). Thus, theoretically, the ia64 architecture would not suffer pipeline stalls at all, but it does make compilers a whole lot more complicated. Also, relying on a compiler to do what CPU normally does in hardware, (theoretically) makes the CPU less complicated. Well, we'll see how it plays out. So far it's been a rough ride for ia64. It's what 3 years late now? And the Merced err... "Itanium" is just a testing CPU, due to be replaced by McKinly.
___
These things don't "reduce effectiveness" as you say. They make sharing Apache logs absolutely useless. 99.9% of all residential internet connections have dynamic IP addresses. Some of these are semi-static and change once a month or so (like Cable and DSL via DHCP) some change once a day or so (DSL via PPPoE), but the vast majority change all the time (dialup PPP). Therefore, you cannot track someone by just correlating the IP addresses in different web server logs.
___
Perhaps it *will* be a smoking little OS by the time a new version is released, but it is not now.
___
Unix (and hence Linux) also allows you to have multiple versions of libraries installed. Take a look at /lib and /usr/lib directories some time. You'll see things like:
libfoo.so.x.y
libfoo.so.x
libfoo.so
libfoo.so.x.y is the actual library, and x.y is the major/minor version (it might be x.y.z or whatever). Point is that you can have multiple versions of those installed at the same time. libfoo.so.x and libfoo.so are symbolic liks to the actual library. An application can use either the default library (libfoo.so) or it can specify the version.
DLL hell occurs in Windows precisely because multiple versions of libraries cannot be installed at the same time. So if app1 needs foo.dll version 1.2 and app2 needs version 1.3, one of these will not work. This situation generally does not occur on Unix as long as the library developers bump up the version when they change the API.
___
A big problem I see with your methodology is that you probably overcount Linux server shipments. From what I understand (I may be incorrect here) you count each sale of Linux as a server shipment.
So you don't even know if your assumption is correct, but you decide to karma-whore anyway.
___
Sorry for off topic post, but does anyone know what's the deal with Debian releases these days? When do you think woody would be released?
Also, can anyone share their experience running woody? I'm currently using potato on my firewall. Is it safe to upgrade? How about using it on a workstation?
tia
___