Caretaker of the Trinity OS document, David Ranch has put together a solid series of well-maintained recommendations for not only securing Linux, but configuring it from the ground-up. Best of all, I like the fact that he seems to follow the Perl motto. No one distro is necessarily any better, at least once the Trinity OS helps you lock down or tweak what wasn't before.
1) Gutenburg 2) unknown Islamic mathematicians and historians (preserving classical greek works during the Dark Ages, the sextant, etc) 3) Einstein 4) Isacc Newton 5) Malthus (early genetics/heredity research) 6) Marie Curie 7) Charles Darwin 8) Nikola Tesla 9) Galileo 10) Wright Brothers
Now, these are my picks based on historical impact. I suspect as additional research comes forward, these would change to include more people from say Africa or China. This is just what my schooling emphasized, YMMV
Emmett Plant is the latest editorial addition to the Slashdot Authors roster.
His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."
Sorry, I'm informing/. that this idea is clearly >patent pending with "AfterLinux," my pseudo-namesake distro. What? Details? Why would investors want to be bothered with those, it has Linux in the name.
Of course, I hereby resolve not to surpress "artistic expression" and "move away" from my suit in progress, but I damn well better not catch any sort of emmittlinux.com/.org/.net around. That's why they have.mi.us.
I'm not so sure that's true. I think a reasonable argument could be made for SLAPP if etoy has any California members. Of course, other states have similar statutes.
One benefit of filing for dismissal under the Anti-SLAPP statute; generally the presiding judge must hear statements within 30 days of the defense filing for dismissal on Anti-SLAPP grounds. It then becomes the burden of the complainant to show why the suit *does not* fall under the SLAPP statute and further, that they have a substantial likelihood of succeeding before a jury.
In the SLAPP statute-related case I covered this time last year, a developer was forced to dismiss defamation claims against a city councilman and a political action group for supposedly raising title issues that may or may not have caused his ballot measure to fail. So, it seems any individual/company with substantial financial resources would fall under the SLAPP statute.
Finally, according to my research and conversations with some First Amendment attorneys, the law was intended by the legislature (originally and later, by clarification) to be interpreted broadly by the courts. That fact has been upheld recently by the California Supreme Court.
So, assuming etoy could draw a California connection, they could, IMHO, have grounds, assuming they could meet the rather tight SLAPP timeframe (90 days from being served, I believe).
Frankly, any resemblance to an old hippie is coincidental. I merely stopped going to the office to work on Win95 boxen. since the move to Linux, my commute is all of 2 seconds from my bed to my chair. Hence, I look like crap when I wake up. That explain's the funky hair and the (checking stubble) three day's beard growth.
Please don't confuse that with just being a dirty hippie. I get paid to look like this.
Points taken, however, in my mind, it would still be quite a chore to convert all of that data, commandline or not. That's time I would rather have available for serving those same streams, assuming my bandwidth is up to the task.
Secondly, while I've dealt with my share of users who don't know a URL from their septum, I've had just as many really savvy users on the site I work for. And both set are quick to complain if something changes and requires a different player, better bandwidth, a better machine without offering a substantial increase in benefit or quality. That is the case I believe they are going to run into here.
And, while yes, 90 percent or so of the market belongs to MS currently, in the last year, I've watched three different operating systems not named Palm gain mindshare and marketshare. I see no reason to piss them off now, because it looks as if market forces could shift away from total MS dominance.
In the meantime, as a hypothetical CEO, I'd rather have their business rather than letting an all-inclusive competitor get his foot in the door. It's the Internet. Client platforms are much less important to content than they are to productivity applications (like office). If I can deliver HTML and RA or MP3 on damn near every modern OS, why settle for any less of the potential marketshare?
It seems a bit has changed since Bruce wrote his run them out on a rail piece (dead on, IMHO).
Here's the latest I've found:
Trying 140.174.127.98...
Connected to www.linuxone.net. Escape character is '^]'. Linux Mandrake release 6.1 (Helios) Kernel 2.2.13-4mdk on an i686 login:
Hmm, it's not RedHat anymore (it was RedHat 6.0 in early Nov.), but that sure as hell doesn't look like a LinuxOne distro either. I also seriously worry about how the Linux name could be affected by such shoddiness. They apparently haven't even locked the box down. Bad news.
They also claim to have downloadable source at 140.174.127.97, but I've had no luck getting in, with the message:
530-Sorry, too many users are using our ftp site now. Please try again later.
530 Login incorrect.
Hmm. Wonder if they have max users set to something like 1 or 2 to give the appearance that their server is busy. Mainly, I wanted to see for myself how "different" their distro was. So far, no luck and I'm not optimistic.
Hopefully, there is enough noise in the community to keep any innocent users from getting snakebitten by what, to us, are obviously useless and unneccessary products (LinuxMac on the top of the list).
pervious post was an oops. In an era when Real Audio and MP3 streaming media are fairly standard and well supported by most modern browsers across all platforms, why oh why, self limit your audience by moving to Windows Media Player and alienate people?
Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit.
besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have.wav or.aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
In an era when Real Audio and MP3 streaming media are fairly standard and well supported by most modern browsers across all platforms, why oh why, self limit your audience by moving to Windows Media Player and alienate people? Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit. besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have.wav or.aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
It that crap like this keeps us responsible folk from exploring something, understanding the risk involved. Online gambling, sports book could have been cool without me having to drive a few hours to get to Nevada.
I'm hoping the judge tosses this one. Otherwise, stupidity wins a court case again.
What I find interesting, as both/. reader and holder of a journalism degree, is that several people seem to blowing things out of proportion.
Here's what I've got on my scorecard:
1) Bruce said lawsuit time against Corel on a mailing list, not exactly private.
2) Another mailing list reader with an eye on what s/he considers important says "Damn. Bruce is calling for a lawsuit. That's serious." and sends to slashdot.
3) Hemos sees an item on Bruce saying "lawsuit against Corel for violating the GPL." This has come up once before with Corel. Bruce, for all intents and purposes of source checking, appears to have said it. Post it.
4) Bruce doesn't feel so strongly about suing Corel and publically recants. Note, he doesn't say he was misquoted, he says he's changed his mind.
5) Hemos sees a full mail box of people telling him he's a troll for posting the item when Bruce has recanted. Hemos posts an apology.
6) Roblimo points out that Bruce and Hemos got bit by the rapidness of the medium and the attention paid to Bruce and Slashdot in general.
7) People crap on Roblimo for pointing out points 1-5 in point 6.
At no point do I think anyone acted irresponsibly. Bruce is most certainly allowed to change his mind and, if he's aware of the medium he's in, that can be quite public.
What is notable here is that a process that has taken weeks at a paper I used to work for took place in the space of 2-3 days. Big plus: Hemos and Roblimo have made an effort to tone down the orginal item when it became quite apparent that Bruce was toning down his call for action.
Slashdot acted entirely appropriately. I appreciate knowing that Bruce orginally did call for a suit against Corel. It certainly stimulated a lot of, hopefully postive, discussion regarding defense of the GPL. I also am happy to know Corel won't face a suit, since that is the complete status *right now.*
I think if we want fast news from Slashdot or anywhere else, news organizations need to be allowed to make the best judgements they can. Here, Slashdot did. They also need to allow for the story to change over time, which Slashdot also did. Otherwise, with an eight hour, "let everybody be absolutely 110% sure they can't be sued by what they are saying." for every story, nothing would be news.
Thanks Bruce, for making your opinion known. Thanks hemos, for letting the community what was being discussed. Thanks Bruce, for thinking twice. Thanks slashdot for keeping the discussion active. Thanks Roblimo, for making some sense of it all.
[spoiler warning] That wacky mr. potato head
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Review:Toy Story 2
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· Score: 1
As much as all the Star Wars stuff (and there was LOTS) I liked two things
1) when Buzz and the gang are leaving the barn, the door is closing, and Mr. Potato Head throws his derby to keep the door open. How Goldfinger like.
I'm seeing this scene in Toy Story 3
Potato head: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Zurg: "No Mr. Potato Head, I expect you to FRY!"
2) When potato head drops his drawers at the airport.
1) The employer may notice, but they don't necessarily act on that information. In personal experience, some just don't care. However, if they get enough RSI claims, some policy adjustment is likely.
2) Some jobs that people may have trained years for require certain activities, such as typing or mousing (graphics/page layout). This time investment is not easily given up because a particular manager doesn't buy into RSI.
3) While employees should take responsibility for their own well-being, that is mention problems they have with a work environment, it is an employer's responsibility to act on reasonable employee requests to maintain health. I think this idea will certainly raise attention to how damaging RSI can be and how, comparatively, inexpensive it is to invest in compliance.
Of course, I've seen two very different ways of managing worker ergonomic needs.
1) A large computer manufacturer
I was working in a database/customer relations division. Within a week or two of hiring, everyone was given a 20 minute ergonomics evaluation at their workstation. Since workstations included a UNIX terminal, Windows NT box, phone, storage cabinets, etc, everyone was shown how to adjust their monitors/keyboards/mice for optimal comfort. Secondary devices, such as phones and rolodexes were off to the side, but in easy reach.
The benefit? a minimum of RSI complaints and when workers started to feel uncomfortable, they were reevaluated and adjustments to their cubes (with something like two feet of available height adjustment) were made. On occasion, people with back injuries were given stools and stand up workstations to allow them to reduce stress on various parts of their back.
End result: If there were problems, there was a mechanism in place to fix them. People stay healthy, the company looks good for being proactive.
2) Small newspaper
As an editor, I was on the keyboard for seven to eight hours per day. After a month, I noticed wrist soreness and purchased a gel filled wrist pad that helped neutralize how much motion I was making. There was a bit of resistance in expensing it, but they did. So, I took responsibility for what I could afford to fix out of pocket, if the employer would not approve my expensing of what I considered essential to the work function.
Of course, chairs weren't really adjustable and the desks were designed well before ergo became a concern. Hence, no one was really comfortable, at least 1 person out of the 8 in my department filled a worker's comp claim, over which my manager complained. I never found them very comfortable, but also could not afford to risk not being reimbursed for buying my own chair and workstation.
The end result: it seemed part of a larger company attitude to spend as little on employees as possible, regardless of what preventative effect might have been gained. Further, this employer doesn't provide for health benefits until you've been employed 6 months. They aren't exactly encouraging employees to stay and many don't. However, from what I've heard and from what I hear, the situation doesn't change.
While many employers are concerned about their employees well-being, those that ignore it in the sole pursuit of the highest possible profit margin should have the added risk of civil and criminal penalties, even if employees leave over RSI concerns, assuming the employer was notified and failed to act. Unlike the product market, employee departure (especially if limited strictly to RSI) takes a long time to correct faulty policy. In that time, additional and preventable damage may be done.
That said, I'd be in favor of allowing companies to claim ergonomic improvements as tax deductions, if they can't do so now.
I'll freely admit to playing Devil's advocate here, but I think dealing with the answers offers a better clue into a post-Microsoft/Windows monopoly era than just saying "It's about time."
So I ask:
What negative consequences could result from a breakup of Microsoft? Let me break this down.
1) Would courts and government in general have a freer hand to deal with the software industry?
2) What problems arise out of this president?
3) Will the industry (apart from Open Source proponents) at large have reasons to cooperate if Microsoft's "Tower of Babel" is fractured?
That's almost a reasonable amount of time given that it seems like the net lives in dog years (1 year real time = 7 years of internet time).
Of course, patents made much more sense even 10 years ago when product development time was measured in years, not months or weeks. Rather than protecting what a company might have put it's entire existance into for five to eight years of development time, with similiar development cycles for competitors, it made some sense to protect physical inventions.
Now, with product to market leadtimes measured sometimes in hours or days, software patents, particulary those dealing with the net, don't so much protect the ideas as provide a fallback blunt instrument to bludgeon a competitor with.
Given that patents take months to review and be awarded, by the time the patent is awarded, the time frame the patent applies to has passed. A year is effectively worthless, even in Internet time, since beaurocracy doesn't even seemt to work in "real-time."
Finally, could anyone point out where on Yahoo's site they said "Patent Pending" to serve some sort of notice to the community?
Re:Seriously hoping they perfect the installations
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iBook boots Linux
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· Score: 1
Amen. Hopefully, the iBook boots consistantly. More mac support for Linux (and vice versa) is good for both platforms, IMHO. Course, I think the iBook would look damn cool in that new iMac graphite.
Congrats to the experimenter for proof of concept. Hopefully the modem issue will be easier to work around than WinModems appear to be on Wintel designed laptops.
I agree with Jon that the Jane's/Slashdot event is significant. As a model for interaction with readers and a humility in admitting the original story had flaws in need of correction.
I'm glad Jane's editor found useful comments from the community to forge a new article. However, I wonder if, on a local news basis, readers, and much less editors/reporters will take to a similar model. I agree journalism needs to be "outside" more than it is. But I find myself, as a Journalism degree holder, somewhat wary. Why? I work on the web. I know the benefits of the Slashdot model. Of course, I've also seen the "d00d f15s7 p057!'s." I can almost guarantee the "point here-point there, bull in between" viewpoint of the Slashdot model will be hard to overcome in American newsrooms.
It seems a natural tendency with human nature, to stay with the comfortable. For this to work, newspapers now edging towards the web, some embracing it more than others, need to be willing to embrace a more chilling jump. That is, opening the process. From the current vantage point, it can (not always) appear to be a chasm of radical opinions. But then, isn't politics and political coverage that way now?
Perhaps what we as journalists need to realize is as Katz says, the model holds great promise. The key is an ability to filter the tuna from the chum. Here, media in general will have to move beyond Rolodex journalism. That is, when Mr. X of "Foo's for IPv6" says IPv6 is the only rational way of living, call Ms. Y of "Bars for IPv4 or shove that 10baseT up your PCI" for "the other side."
In other words, embrace "community journalism" as illustrated by James Fallows in Breaking the News. A newspaper still employs reporters, but steers their stories based on instant feedback as a story is worked on.
Stories reach a certain point editorially (libel, slander issues are cleared, statements of fact checked and moderated) before posting to a site. Then, feedback takes over. At this point the model becomes a bit less like Slashdot. I doubt papers will allow for AC posting, instead insisting that everyone offering comment register and be willing to "own" their comments by being responsible for them. Basically, if a user posts "That's crap and Mr. Y of Foo is a raging segfault!" the paper has less liability for keeping the comment, which the user posted to a registered forum.
Of course, moderators in the Slashdot sense do their work. What happens next is perhaps the largest adjustment to be made, a paper revises its story of record on site. In print, a "newspaper" revises online stories, and digests them with the highest moderated feedback. Tease the URLs back to the original content since the story is still alive, so to speak. A story never becomes "final" as long as it gains comments, feeds new stories and remains moderated.
Sounds easy right? Well it's not. Remember journalists are people too, with about the same percentage of early adopters, followers, late adopters. It may look easy to Slashdot readers, since we're all the early adopters in this new model.
The new model, if it is going to work, needs to expand beyond the technically oriented. Early adopters we may be, but representative of the majority we are not. We need to convince the less technically oriented. We need non-technical examples of how the Slashdot model can work. More importantly, media will need patience. The change will come, but after a leader has made the mistakes and corrected them and succeeded by *industry* measure. In other words, award winning, Pulitzer quality work needs to happen with the new model.
Other important questions need to be answered, too. Is the model computer only and does it favor high speed internet access? What of the computer and bandwidth poor (not necessarily financially), how is their voice included in this bazaar model? How free should a media company be to pursue stories its consumers aren't interested in? Should a media company still pursue stories its gotten favorable response from? How does the lunatic fringe participate or do they at all? Would Dateline NBC get any better, really? These questions are going to be asked at any paper where the idea even remotely comes up, if it isn't instantly shouted down.
The Wired cover goes to the media company, or garage startup smart enough to have a feet in the fast adopter camp yet know where traditional journalism is coming from, and show the current players how to do it differently and better. The future of journalism is waiting on more good examples.
I think what really kills the idea of "talking to your children" is the fact that few politicians, school administrators, teachers and parents want to take time to answer *every* question children have about the vast gray area that exists between black (wrong) and white (right).
Let's take a few examples.
1) Forest fires started by playing with matches are bad. Only you can prevent forest fires.
Sure, forest fires started carelessly are generally bad. But lightening started brush fires can do a lot of good by clearing highly flammable underbrush before it becomes an extreme. Have too much of it and fires burn so hot, it sterilizes the ground and kills seed pods (cones) from conifers.
So, in some cases, fire can be *good*
2) Drugs are bad. Marijuana is a gateway drug. Smoke dope and you're a heroin junkie next month.
No. Marijuana possesion has been probably the most disproportionately punished "crime" in recent memory. The gateway drug evidence is scant. Yes there are some bad ass mofo drugs out there, but weed isn't it.
3) All hacking is bad. If you hack, you suck eggs. Just look at Kevin Mitnick. You don't want to look like *him* do you? Going beyond the GUI is bad. Your government wouldn't approve.
Well, I really don't know how they are going to taylor that. But, I'm pretty sure it will be along the lines of the two earlier examples. Basically, an elephant gun as a flyswatter.
Instead, we (society/schools) ought to be willing to answer questions that stem from curiosity. And answer them honestly.
As for hacking, we ought to distinguish between digging into a system to foster creative problem solving, vs. cracking with an intent to damage data, etc.
Without explaining the subtleties, I think children get a sense they've been lied to when they find out these things aren't as evil as their education made them seem. Hence, a lot more of what they were taught must be bupkiss as well. Game over.
Unlike previous security measures that rely on software ''firewalls'' that filter out unauthorized users of information, IBM has developed a security chip embedded within the computer hardware, which, it says, adds additional levels of security.
Now, the suits *may* ask, "Why do we need that pricey firewall when IBM's got this hardware security solution? We could standardize on that."
Hopefully, the smarter sysadmins will respond to the sentiment with, "Well, yes, I suppose we could dump the firewall and rely only on an untested hardware chip and our desktop operating system's inherent security."
Please. Well tuned firewalls, carefully administered networks and attentive sys admins are going to do a lot more than any ID chip.
As for identifying users and protecting digital documents, the pre-existing software solutions are well tested. GPG and PGP are the best examples. What's more, they've already got the support of nearly everyone.
Perhaps Apple won't be around. Maybe none of us will. But to say that Apple's suits against what were most likely intentially designed clones/knock offs are bad business ethics is poor rational. Not to beat a dead horse (faster! faster!) but, if I tried to sell a soft drink cola in a red can with the name Coki Coli in a cursive font, you bet your ass that giant Atlanta-based soft drink firm would sue me to Armageddon. And they'd be right to do it.
Re: disabling upgrade potential. While, *yes* apple made a bone headed move with the BW G3 firmware update, it *is* reversable. Remember, firmware is sw upgradable. Further, Apple sources have indicated the firmware block will be removed.
Dwindling market share: Actually, market share has increased over the last year. Further, no matter how you slice the market share dilema, a user base around 4-5 million is significant. And i think I'm estimating low.
Overpriced/underpowered: Compared to what? A top level Dell machine is going to cost about what a new G3 will cost. Apple component quality is equal or higher than Dell's pro line. You pay a bit more, for both than a you-build-it, but the machines are, by and large, reliable. I like the piece of mind. Many home users and businesses do, too.
As far as performance goes, Photoshop on my g3/233 outperforms most PII systems going to the 350 range. MS-Office opens faster as well. Note, these aren't Apple's figures, but my, personal, real world observations.
But, yes, seeing open G4/5 motherboards for linux/*BSD would be very cool. Cross platform competition is good and I think the PPC architecture has fewer performance compromises than the x86 platform.
yes, you could. the processor daughter cards with cache are in a ZIF socket. However, I still can't go to Fry's and buy a PPC processor. I would like to able to do this. Maybe those new IBM based PPC CHRP boxes will help out.
Of course, I was planning on running my current G3/233 as a Linux PPC IP masquerade/apache server at some point anyway. Just waiting til they hit the 650 MHz range with dual processors.
The power of the G3/G4 is in FPU performance, roughly 1.3 to 1.5x (in the real world) faster than the Pentium family equivalents, depending on whose numbers you subscribe to.
This is why Photoshop filtering is faster on PowerPC processors, they're an FPU intensive process. Thus,
Where PPC, through the G3 falls behind the Pentium slightly is interger performance. This, other than secret Os tuning, is likely why non FPU intesive applications get slightly better performance on Intel than PPC at otherwise equivalent clock speeds, IMHO.
Where Intel has fallen behind, is with the G4's Altivec graphics instructions.
Without further discussing the general merits of the proposal, which i stand against, I would like the Justice Department to do a few things if this proposal is to even move to congressional discussion.
1) Provide 20 examples where a child molester's arrest and prosection was in significant doubt due to their use of personal encryption. Provide further example of how their use of encryption prevented *any* evidence collection, be it biological, photographic or text based.
2) Provide the current results of those 20 investigations.
3) Provide the current number of drug trafficking investigations hinging solely on access to encrypted evidence. Again, I'm looking to see if and how this prevented physical evidence collection or phone wire tapping.
4) Provide the current number and status of investigations involving suspected terrorists, foreign and domestic, whose investigation hinges solely on access to encrypted evidence.
5) Provide the number of criminal investigations in the United States. Further provide the number of those cases who's outcomes were determined two or more types of evidence. Provide specific examples of the evidence involved. Finally, provide the number of cases in which the accused was found to use encryption for phones or computers.
6) Provide an explanation for why private, law-abiding citizens should be asked to sacrifice the liberty of privacy using the citations given above. Further explain how such this proposal would pass constitutional muster before federal courts.
In reference to the above criteria, i don't want to leave the impression that privacy is something to be sold in exchange for a few specific events. But I'd like to see quite a few specifics rather than
"We've already begun to encounter [encryption's harmful effects]," stated Gretchen Michael, Justice spokeswoman, in the Post story. "What we have seen to date is just the tip of the iceberg."
O'Reilly would be very cool. Better yet, for the O'Reilly stuff, they could have a print reference edition on a yearly basis, and run quarterly, monthly (hourly?) updates as new information/sw becomes available. Or, bug's become documented & fixed.
The only downside, would you really want David Pogue's PalmPilot guide on your PalmPilot? --
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the hard work.
But free books. I'll have to choose encouraging literacy over web servers. Maybe it was my time under the wing of B. Dalton.
2) unknown Islamic mathematicians and historians (preserving classical greek works during the Dark Ages, the sextant, etc)
3) Einstein
4) Isacc Newton
5) Malthus (early genetics/heredity research)
6) Marie Curie
7) Charles Darwin
8) Nikola Tesla
9) Galileo
10) Wright Brothers
Now, these are my picks based on historical impact. I suspect as additional research comes forward, these would change to include more people from say Africa or China. This is just what my schooling emphasized, YMMV
His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."
Sorry, I'm informing /. that this idea is clearly >patent pending with "AfterLinux," my pseudo-namesake distro. What? Details? Why would investors want to be bothered with those, it has Linux in the name.
Of course, I hereby resolve not to surpress "artistic expression" and "move away" from my suit in progress, but I damn well better not catch any sort of emmittlinux.com /.org/.net around. That's why they have .mi.us.
One benefit of filing for dismissal under the Anti-SLAPP statute; generally the presiding judge must hear statements within 30 days of the defense filing for dismissal on Anti-SLAPP grounds. It then becomes the burden of the complainant to show why the suit *does not* fall under the SLAPP statute and further, that they have a substantial likelihood of succeeding before a jury.
In the SLAPP statute-related case I covered this time last year, a developer was forced to dismiss defamation claims against a city councilman and a political action group for supposedly raising title issues that may or may not have caused his ballot measure to fail. So, it seems any individual/company with substantial financial resources would fall under the SLAPP statute.
Finally, according to my research and conversations with some First Amendment attorneys, the law was intended by the legislature (originally and later, by clarification) to be interpreted broadly by the courts. That fact has been upheld recently by the California Supreme Court.
So, assuming etoy could draw a California connection, they could, IMHO, have grounds, assuming they could meet the rather tight SLAPP timeframe (90 days from being served, I believe).
Please don't confuse that with just being a dirty hippie. I get paid to look like this.
Secondly, while I've dealt with my share of users who don't know a URL from their septum, I've had just as many really savvy users on the site I work for. And both set are quick to complain if something changes and requires a different player, better bandwidth, a better machine without offering a substantial increase in benefit or quality. That is the case I believe they are going to run into here.
And, while yes, 90 percent or so of the market belongs to MS currently, in the last year, I've watched three different operating systems not named Palm gain mindshare and marketshare. I see no reason to piss them off now, because it looks as if market forces could shift away from total MS dominance.
In the meantime, as a hypothetical CEO, I'd rather have their business rather than letting an all-inclusive competitor get his foot in the door. It's the Internet. Client platforms are much less important to content than they are to productivity applications (like office). If I can deliver HTML and RA or MP3 on damn near every modern OS, why settle for any less of the potential marketshare?
Here's the latest I've found:
Hmm, it's not RedHat anymore (it was RedHat 6.0 in early Nov.), but that sure as hell doesn't look like a LinuxOne distro either. I also seriously worry about how the Linux name could be affected by such shoddiness. They apparently haven't even locked the box down. Bad news.They also claim to have downloadable source at 140.174.127.97, but I've had no luck getting in, with the message:
Hmm. Wonder if they have max users set to something like 1 or 2 to give the appearance that their server is busy. Mainly, I wanted to see for myself how "different" their distro was. So far, no luck and I'm not optimistic.Hopefully, there is enough noise in the community to keep any innocent users from getting snakebitten by what, to us, are obviously useless and unneccessary products (LinuxMac on the top of the list).
Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit.
besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have .wav or .aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
In an era when Real Audio and MP3 streaming media are fairly standard and well supported by most modern browsers across all platforms, why oh why, self limit your audience by moving to Windows Media Player and alienate people? Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit. besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have .wav or .aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
It that crap like this keeps us responsible folk from exploring something, understanding the risk involved. Online gambling, sports book could have been cool without me having to drive a few hours to get to Nevada.
I'm hoping the judge tosses this one. Otherwise, stupidity wins a court case again.
What I find interesting, as both /. reader and holder of a journalism degree, is that several people seem to blowing things out of proportion.
Here's what I've got on my scorecard:
1) Bruce said lawsuit time against Corel on a mailing list, not exactly private.
2) Another mailing list reader with an eye on what s/he considers important says "Damn. Bruce is calling for a lawsuit. That's serious." and sends to slashdot.
3) Hemos sees an item on Bruce saying "lawsuit against Corel for violating the GPL." This has come up once before with Corel. Bruce, for all intents and purposes of source checking, appears to have said it. Post it.
4) Bruce doesn't feel so strongly about suing Corel and publically recants. Note, he doesn't say he was misquoted, he says he's changed his mind.
5) Hemos sees a full mail box of people telling him he's a troll for posting the item when Bruce has recanted. Hemos posts an apology.
6) Roblimo points out that Bruce and Hemos got bit by the rapidness of the medium and the attention paid to Bruce and Slashdot in general.
7) People crap on Roblimo for pointing out points 1-5 in point 6.
At no point do I think anyone acted irresponsibly. Bruce is most certainly allowed to change his mind and, if he's aware of the medium he's in, that can be quite public.
What is notable here is that a process that has taken weeks at a paper I used to work for took place in the space of 2-3 days. Big plus: Hemos and Roblimo have made an effort to tone down the orginal item when it became quite apparent that Bruce was toning down his call for action.
Slashdot acted entirely appropriately. I appreciate knowing that Bruce orginally did call for a suit against Corel. It certainly stimulated a lot of, hopefully postive, discussion regarding defense of the GPL. I also am happy to know Corel won't face a suit, since that is the complete status *right now.*
I think if we want fast news from Slashdot or anywhere else, news organizations need to be allowed to make the best judgements they can. Here, Slashdot did. They also need to allow for the story to change over time, which Slashdot also did. Otherwise, with an eight hour, "let everybody be absolutely 110% sure they can't be sued by what they are saying." for every story, nothing would be news.
Thanks Bruce, for making your opinion known.
Thanks hemos, for letting the community what was being discussed.
Thanks Bruce, for thinking twice.
Thanks slashdot for keeping the discussion active.
Thanks Roblimo, for making some sense of it all.
As much as all the Star Wars stuff (and there was LOTS) I liked two things
1) when Buzz and the gang are leaving the barn, the door is closing, and Mr. Potato Head throws his derby to keep the door open. How Goldfinger like.
I'm seeing this scene in Toy Story 3
Potato head: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Zurg: "No Mr. Potato Head, I expect you to FRY!"
2) When potato head drops his drawers at the airport.
1) The employer may notice, but they don't necessarily act on that information. In personal experience, some just don't care. However, if they get enough RSI claims, some policy adjustment is likely.
2) Some jobs that people may have trained years for require certain activities, such as typing or mousing (graphics/page layout). This time investment is not easily given up because a particular manager doesn't buy into RSI.
3) While employees should take responsibility for their own well-being, that is mention problems they have with a work environment, it is an employer's responsibility to act on reasonable employee requests to maintain health. I think this idea will certainly raise attention to how damaging RSI can be and how, comparatively, inexpensive it is to invest in compliance.
Of course, I've seen two very different ways of managing worker ergonomic needs.
1) A large computer manufacturer
I was working in a database/customer relations division. Within a week or two of hiring, everyone was given a 20 minute ergonomics evaluation at their workstation. Since workstations included a UNIX terminal, Windows NT box, phone, storage cabinets, etc, everyone was shown how to adjust their monitors/keyboards/mice for optimal comfort. Secondary devices, such as phones and rolodexes were off to the side, but in easy reach.
The benefit? a minimum of RSI complaints and when workers started to feel uncomfortable, they were reevaluated and adjustments to their cubes (with something like two feet of available height adjustment) were made. On occasion, people with back injuries were given stools and stand up workstations to allow them to reduce stress on various parts of their back.
End result: If there were problems, there was a mechanism in place to fix them. People stay healthy, the company looks good for being proactive.
2) Small newspaper
As an editor, I was on the keyboard for seven to eight hours per day. After a month, I noticed wrist soreness and purchased a gel filled wrist pad that helped neutralize how much motion I was making. There was a bit of resistance in expensing it, but they did. So, I took responsibility for what I could afford to fix out of pocket, if the employer would not approve my expensing of what I considered essential to the work function.
Of course, chairs weren't really adjustable and the desks were designed well before ergo became a concern. Hence, no one was really comfortable, at least 1 person out of the 8 in my department filled a worker's comp claim, over which my manager complained. I never found them very comfortable, but also could not afford to risk not being reimbursed for buying my own chair and workstation.
The end result: it seemed part of a larger company attitude to spend as little on employees as possible, regardless of what preventative effect might have been gained. Further, this employer doesn't provide for health benefits until you've been employed 6 months. They aren't exactly encouraging employees to stay and many don't. However, from what I've heard and from what I hear, the situation doesn't change.
While many employers are concerned about their employees well-being, those that ignore it in the sole pursuit of the highest possible profit margin should have the added risk of civil and criminal penalties, even if employees leave over RSI concerns, assuming the employer was notified and failed to act. Unlike the product market, employee departure (especially if limited strictly to RSI) takes a long time to correct faulty policy. In that time, additional and preventable damage may be done.
That said, I'd be in favor of allowing companies to claim ergonomic improvements as tax deductions, if they can't do so now.
I'll freely admit to playing Devil's advocate here, but I think dealing with the answers offers a better clue into a post-Microsoft/Windows monopoly era than just saying "It's about time."
So I ask:
What negative consequences could result from a breakup of Microsoft? Let me break this down.
1) Would courts and government in general have a freer hand to deal with the software industry?
2) What problems arise out of this president?
3) Will the industry (apart from Open Source proponents) at large have reasons to cooperate if Microsoft's "Tower of Babel" is fractured?
That's almost a reasonable amount of time given that it seems like the net lives in dog years (1 year real time = 7 years of internet time).
Of course, patents made much more sense even 10 years ago when product development time was measured in years, not months or weeks. Rather than protecting what a company might have put it's entire existance into for five to eight years of development time, with similiar development cycles for competitors, it made some sense to protect physical inventions.
Now, with product to market leadtimes measured sometimes in hours or days, software patents, particulary those dealing with the net, don't so much protect the ideas as provide a fallback blunt instrument to bludgeon a competitor with.
Given that patents take months to review and be awarded, by the time the patent is awarded, the time frame the patent applies to has passed. A year is effectively worthless, even in Internet time, since beaurocracy doesn't even seemt to work in "real-time."
Finally, could anyone point out where on Yahoo's site they said "Patent Pending" to serve some sort of notice to the community?
Amen.
Hopefully, the iBook boots consistantly. More mac support for Linux (and vice versa) is good for both platforms, IMHO. Course, I think the iBook would look damn cool in that new iMac graphite.
Congrats to the experimenter for proof of concept. Hopefully the modem issue will be easier to work around than WinModems appear to be on Wintel designed laptops.
I'm glad Jane's editor found useful comments from the community to forge a new article. However, I wonder if, on a local news basis, readers, and much less editors/reporters will take to a similar model. I agree journalism needs to be "outside" more than it is. But I find myself, as a Journalism degree holder, somewhat wary. Why? I work on the web. I know the benefits of the Slashdot model. Of course, I've also seen the "d00d f15s7 p057!'s." I can almost guarantee the "point here-point there, bull in between" viewpoint of the Slashdot model will be hard to overcome in American newsrooms.
It seems a natural tendency with human nature, to stay with the comfortable. For this to work, newspapers now edging towards the web, some embracing it more than others, need to be willing to embrace a more chilling jump. That is, opening the process. From the current vantage point, it can (not always) appear to be a chasm of radical opinions. But then, isn't politics and political coverage that way now?
Perhaps what we as journalists need to realize is as Katz says, the model holds great promise. The key is an ability to filter the tuna from the chum. Here, media in general will have to move beyond Rolodex journalism. That is, when Mr. X of "Foo's for IPv6" says IPv6 is the only rational way of living, call Ms. Y of "Bars for IPv4 or shove that 10baseT up your PCI" for "the other side."
In other words, embrace "community journalism" as illustrated by James Fallows in Breaking the News. A newspaper still employs reporters, but steers their stories based on instant feedback as a story is worked on.
Stories reach a certain point editorially (libel, slander issues are cleared, statements of fact checked and moderated) before posting to a site. Then, feedback takes over. At this point the model becomes a bit less like Slashdot. I doubt papers will allow for AC posting, instead insisting that everyone offering comment register and be willing to "own" their comments by being responsible for them. Basically, if a user posts "That's crap and Mr. Y of Foo is a raging segfault!" the paper has less liability for keeping the comment, which the user posted to a registered forum.
Of course, moderators in the Slashdot sense do their work. What happens next is perhaps the largest adjustment to be made, a paper revises its story of record on site. In print, a "newspaper" revises online stories, and digests them with the highest moderated feedback. Tease the URLs back to the original content since the story is still alive, so to speak. A story never becomes "final" as long as it gains comments, feeds new stories and remains moderated.
Sounds easy right? Well it's not. Remember journalists are people too, with about the same percentage of early adopters, followers, late adopters. It may look easy to Slashdot readers, since we're all the early adopters in this new model.
The new model, if it is going to work, needs to expand beyond the technically oriented. Early adopters we may be, but representative of the majority we are not. We need to convince the less technically oriented. We need non-technical examples of how the Slashdot model can work. More importantly, media will need patience. The change will come, but after a leader has made the mistakes and corrected them and succeeded by *industry* measure. In other words, award winning, Pulitzer quality work needs to happen with the new model.
Other important questions need to be answered, too. Is the model computer only and does it favor high speed internet access? What of the computer and bandwidth poor (not necessarily financially), how is their voice included in this bazaar model? How free should a media company be to pursue stories its consumers aren't interested in? Should a media company still pursue stories its gotten favorable response from? How does the lunatic fringe participate or do they at all? Would Dateline NBC get any better, really? These questions are going to be asked at any paper where the idea even remotely comes up, if it isn't instantly shouted down.
The Wired cover goes to the media company, or garage startup smart enough to have a feet in the fast adopter camp yet know where traditional journalism is coming from, and show the current players how to do it differently and better. The future of journalism is waiting on more good examples.
I think what really kills the idea of "talking to your children" is the fact that few politicians, school administrators, teachers and parents want to take time to answer *every* question children have about the vast gray area that exists between black (wrong) and white (right).
Let's take a few examples.
1) Forest fires started by playing with matches are bad. Only you can prevent forest fires.
Sure, forest fires started carelessly are generally bad. But lightening started brush fires can do a lot of good by clearing highly flammable underbrush before it becomes an extreme. Have too much of it and fires burn so hot, it sterilizes the ground and kills seed pods (cones) from conifers.
So, in some cases, fire can be *good*
2) Drugs are bad. Marijuana is a gateway drug. Smoke dope and you're a heroin junkie next month.
No. Marijuana possesion has been probably the most disproportionately punished "crime" in recent memory. The gateway drug evidence is scant. Yes there are some bad ass mofo drugs out there, but weed isn't it.
3) All hacking is bad. If you hack, you suck eggs. Just look at Kevin Mitnick. You don't want to look like *him* do you? Going beyond the GUI is bad. Your government wouldn't approve.
Well, I really don't know how they are going to taylor that. But, I'm pretty sure it will be along the lines of the two earlier examples. Basically, an elephant gun as a flyswatter.
Instead, we (society/schools) ought to be willing to answer questions that stem from curiosity. And answer them honestly.
As for hacking, we ought to distinguish between digging into a system to foster creative problem solving, vs. cracking with an intent to damage data, etc.
Without explaining the subtleties, I think children get a sense they've been lied to when they find out these things aren't as evil as their education made them seem. Hence, a lot more of what they were taught must be bupkiss as well. Game over.
Now, the suits *may* ask, "Why do we need that pricey firewall when IBM's got this hardware security solution? We could standardize on that."
Hopefully, the smarter sysadmins will respond to the sentiment with, "Well, yes, I suppose we could dump the firewall and rely only on an untested hardware chip and our desktop operating system's inherent security."
Please. Well tuned firewalls, carefully administered networks and attentive sys admins are going to do a lot more than any ID chip.
As for identifying users and protecting digital documents, the pre-existing software solutions are well tested. GPG and PGP are the best examples. What's more, they've already got the support of nearly everyone.
End rant
Perhaps Apple won't be around. Maybe none of us will. But to say that Apple's suits against what were most likely intentially designed clones/knock offs are bad business ethics is poor rational. Not to beat a dead horse (faster! faster!) but, if I tried to sell a soft drink cola in a red can with the name Coki Coli in a cursive font, you bet your ass that giant Atlanta-based soft drink firm would sue me to Armageddon. And they'd be right to do it.
Re: disabling upgrade potential. While, *yes* apple made a bone headed move with the BW G3 firmware update, it *is* reversable. Remember, firmware is sw upgradable. Further, Apple sources have indicated the firmware block will be removed.
Dwindling market share: Actually, market share has increased over the last year. Further, no matter how you slice the market share dilema, a user base around 4-5 million is significant. And i think I'm estimating low.
Overpriced/underpowered: Compared to what? A top level Dell machine is going to cost about what a new G3 will cost. Apple component quality is equal or higher than Dell's pro line. You pay a bit more, for both than a you-build-it, but the machines are, by and large, reliable. I like the piece of mind. Many home users and businesses do, too.
As far as performance goes, Photoshop on my g3/233 outperforms most PII systems going to the 350 range. MS-Office opens faster as well. Note, these aren't Apple's figures, but my, personal, real world observations.
But, yes, seeing open G4/5 motherboards for linux/*BSD would be very cool. Cross platform competition is good and I think the PPC architecture has fewer performance compromises than the x86 platform.
yes, you could. the processor daughter cards with cache are in a ZIF socket. However, I still can't go to Fry's and buy a PPC processor. I would like to able to do this. Maybe those new IBM based PPC CHRP boxes will help out.
Of course, I was planning on running my current G3/233 as a Linux PPC IP masquerade/apache server at some point anyway. Just waiting til they hit the 650 MHz range with dual processors.
The power of the G3/G4 is in FPU performance, roughly 1.3 to 1.5x (in the real world) faster than the Pentium family equivalents, depending on whose numbers you subscribe to.
This is why Photoshop filtering is faster on PowerPC processors, they're an FPU intensive process. Thus,
Where PPC, through the G3 falls behind the Pentium slightly is interger performance. This, other than secret Os tuning, is likely why non FPU intesive applications get slightly better performance on Intel than PPC at otherwise equivalent clock speeds, IMHO.
Where Intel has fallen behind, is with the G4's Altivec graphics instructions.
1) Provide 20 examples where a child molester's arrest and prosection was in significant doubt due to their use of personal encryption. Provide further example of how their use of encryption prevented *any* evidence collection, be it biological, photographic or text based.
2) Provide the current results of those 20 investigations.
3) Provide the current number of drug trafficking investigations hinging solely on access to encrypted evidence. Again, I'm looking to see if and how this prevented physical evidence collection or phone wire tapping.
4) Provide the current number and status of investigations involving suspected terrorists, foreign and domestic, whose investigation hinges solely on access to encrypted evidence.
5) Provide the number of criminal investigations in the United States. Further provide the number of those cases who's outcomes were determined two or more types of evidence. Provide specific examples of the evidence involved. Finally, provide the number of cases in which the accused was found to use encryption for phones or computers.
6) Provide an explanation for why private, law-abiding citizens should be asked to sacrifice the liberty of privacy using the citations given above. Further explain how such this proposal would pass constitutional muster before federal courts.
In reference to the above criteria, i don't want to leave the impression that privacy is something to be sold in exchange for a few specific events. But I'd like to see quite a few specifics rather than
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O'Reilly would be very cool. Better yet, for the O'Reilly stuff, they could have a print reference edition on a yearly basis, and run quarterly, monthly (hourly?) updates as new information/sw becomes available. Or, bug's become documented & fixed.
The only downside, would you really want David Pogue's PalmPilot guide on your PalmPilot?
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