about 5 months after 9/11 I was running a game-server. On a weekend where the newly minted DHS was warning of an elevated "Orange" threat level, I had a player who had previously talked to me about his issues as a somewhat fundamentalist Muslim who was acting up on the site.
When a support admin threatened to permanently kick him off of the system, he replied "That's OK. I won't be alive tomorrow."
Hmm... Elevated threat level, warnings of possible suicide attacks in the next day or so, and a fundamentalist muslim kid warning that he intends to die roughly in that time frame.... Sounds like something worth investigating (if only because we've got a kid that seems to be threatening to kill himeslf... terrorism or no).
Being a Canadian, I call the Canadian 1-800 terrorism tip line (remember... less than 6 months since 9/11) and find that it's been disconnected.
I then turn to US sources, and try to leave information in various places. Then I turn to the local US Consulate and leave an urgent message. After about 24 hours of trying various routes (both Canadian and US), I finally get a callback from a completely disinterested consular official who pretty much has the attitude of "explain to me why I shouldn't hang up on you".
Less than 6 months after 9/11, an orange threat level, and a suicidal fanatic on my site, and I'm fighting to explain why a US official should even take a report from me. "call us with any tips you might have"... Yea, right!
That was the last time I took post 9/11 security fanaticism seriously. (other than as a threat to my civil rights).
Solaris's UNIX code also comes from open-source related roots. For much of the early history of UNIX, almost everybody who used it had access to the source code. As a result much of the code improvements came from the users. Yes, technically, it was 'proprietary' code. On the other hand, when anybody who wants to can have access by paying a (sometimes nominal) fee and signing a boilerplate document, it's hard to accept a claim that truly closed source, either.
Ultimately, AT&T plagiarized huge chunks of the BSD code into SYSV (which is why they sheepishly settled their case with the Berkeley Regents), and then what was left of SYSV and BSD were merged into Solaris.
Yes, it's now had 15-20 years of closed source development, but Solaris was built on top of a strong body of Open Source code.
You think that a spacecraft should be as reliable as your household plumbing and electrical? Think again. On the way to the plumbing and electrical standards that we have now, there were a lot of homes that burnt down due to errors in design, or flooded out because some issue was overlooked --- and I'm sure that there are a couple of houses that: the only reason why they didn't burn down because of electrical problems was that the fire was put out by a leak from a plumbing problem.
Now, 100 years later, we think that we have most of the kinks out,
Actually, just this week, we had a plumber in to our place to move a sink. He used a 'new and improved' connector that resulted in the hot water line popping loose. Thankfully it was during business hours, and we were able to turn off the supply line before we had a massive flood.
We called his company up and they were able to come over and fix the problem in a couple of hours.
Spacecraft designs, on the other hand, don't have millions of beta-testers and a house call isn't possible when you're 200million miles away. That's why they spend millions of dollars testing their systems, and why they still sometimes fail. That's also why they like redundant systems -- so that, when the inevitable glitches do happen, there's at least a reasonable hope that the most critical functions won't be lost.
In fact, if one chooses their graphics processor well, it's actually pretty rare to get a random box that has hardware requiring binary blobs for Linux functionality.
Somebody made a suggestion about putting DOS capability into the software, and a (more sane) developer pointed out that such action would be illegal. At that point (One would hope), the idea was dropped into a bit bucket.
I can't see how having a thread indicating that such an idea is illegal (if not immoral) would be illegal. Forcing the sites admins to remove such a thread would (besides being an act of censorship) cause the admins additional pain because somebody else would come up with the same idea a week later and (seeing that nobody else had suggested it) post it again (once again requiring action on the part of the site admins).
I think that the biggest problem is that some people think that -- just because you get an officious-sounding demand, you have some requirement to follow it. The best thing to do would probably be to tell them that you have dealt with the problem in your own way (by publicly telling the OP that their idea is probably illegal), and that they're free to censor their own site if they're interested in doing so.
If these guys really want to go after the original developers in court over this supposed slight, chances are that they'll end up knee deep in GPL lawsuits. I seriously doubt that they're willing to go there.
(IANAL, but I have fun pretending to be one on slashdot).
Groklaw was asked to look at, and comment on this testimony some time ago by someone associated with the defence, and so PJ was interested in the result and noted that the defence report seemed to, generally, agree with the Groklaw analysis.
... writing that the Jacobson reports demonstrate "borderline incompetence." Which is pretty much what you concluded.
To which one Groklawer replied: "I don't recall anyone on Groklaw using the word
'borderline'. "
Now that AMD/ATI has come over from the Dark Side, I expect that Nvidia and all of the other graphics chip manufacturers are going to be close behind. It may take them a year or two to work out the logistics, but they'll be here.
More and more people are moving over to Linux/BSD Free/Open software, and letting yourself be locked out of a growing market is the kind of things that CEOs and CTO's get fired for.
It used to be the case that manufacturers could peacefully close their eyes to the Open Source / Free communities and drink the Microsoft brand Kool-Aid because all of their competitors were doing the same thing. Now, however, with one of The big guns having committed to solid support of the Open Source universe, their less responsive competitors have a massive flank open that is going to have to be responded to.
If every MP that voted for this stupid law suddenly found their broadband connection being cut because their kid wanted to see the latest ((whatever)) video, this law would (hopefullly) get repealed within 6 weeks.
.... So it's like asking the company, "Would you like the code you paid for to be competing against your new product?"
Not necessarily. It may be that the code he wrote was for internal uses. If so, it doesn't really compete with anything that the company sells. It might be just peachy for giving away. (That's a question for the company big brass to answer)... the question he was asking was where he could find a boilerplate for a sign-off document where the company could hand off the code in such a way that the open-sourcing of it wouldn't come back to bite them.
When asking something unusual of your boss(es), it's an intelligent thing to make it as easy as possible for them to say 'yes'.
The original Motorola flip phones were almost indestructible too.
The one thing that I hated about them was the limited battery life, so I took a couple of jell cell batteries and a dead cell phone battery from the , ripped out the Ni-Cad cells and replaced them with a voltage controller then I ran a coiled cable from the jell cells to the battery pack, and... Voila! One cell-phone battery from hell (as far as the phone company was concerned).. and a good bit more sturdy than the car-adapter plugs that Motorola sold..... From measuring the current, I figured that that pack gave me 3 days standby PLUS 8 hours of talk time (back when a normal 'extended' battery barely gave you 8 hours of standby with no talk time).
I put the whole kit and kaboodle in fluke meter pouch and I had a nice portable phone that lasted the weekend. (and doubled as a 5-pound flail in case I was ever attacked by some idiot).
So, what does this have to do with indestructible???.... well, I used a bike to go everywhere and... every once in a while, the cell phone would somehow work it's way out of the pouch while I was riding along at 30MPH, hit the pavement and bounce around at the end of the battery cord until I noticed the problem and hit the brakes.
I'm told (and do truly believe) that somebody once lost a bet that he could destroy one of those phones with his bare hands... I actually made a half-hearted attempt at destroying mine when I gave up on the analog line. I'm pretty sure that, if I really wanted to, I could have kept that thing going today.
Oh, and how I got the phone: it was the on-call support phone. A workmate had dropped the phone in the ocean (salt water --- nasty thing to do to most electronics) and, even though it kept working, my boss wasn't willing to risk it dying in the middle of a support call. My personal cell phone had just gotten stolen so when they replaced the work phone I got the sea-water soaked one, and used it for over 5 years.
Methinks that they have no problem with 'poor' people pirating their software on the sly and for free, because it keeps the monopoly alive. It's really unlikely that they're going to willingly kill 90% of that piracy market.
( If everybody who wanted an office suite or OS but couldn't (or refused to) afford MS's prices was 'forced' to go with OpenOffice and/or Linux, MS's death--grip on the market would very quickly be pried open. )
These guys, on the other hand, seem to have been selling 'legitimate' copies of Microsoft products for real cheap -- That really does cut into Microsoft's market, which is people who are willing to pay for their products in return for either a clean conscience or to keep the MS police at bay.
Instead of "cool as a cucumber", we can now say "cool as the sun's surface". Of course, everybody who's not an astrophysicist (or a slashdot reader) will look at you like you've just grown a new head, but... you can't have everything.
How is using a different file format helping me to read older formats? This comment is not insighful, it compares apples to oranges.
A few things fall out of switching to ODF:
You're freed from the mind-bogglingly arbitrary decisions of Microsoft -- such as this one, RE: file formats.
Switching to ODF makes it easier to switch to OpenOffice.
If you're using OpenOffice, it's easier to open 'archaic' Microsoft formats than when using MS Office (and Microsoft is, apparently, intent on widening the gap)
Even if you're using MS-Office to create ODF files, you still have the added safety of knowing that other people are making software that reads (and writes) the ODF format -- That way, if/when MS pulls support from ODF (and/or OOXML) 5 or 10 years from now, you won't be completely SOL in terms of being able to read your old files.
(yeah, I know -- MS claims that OOXML will be 'open', but:
we really have no promise that MS will ever actually support the 'open' version of OOXML that is ultimately passed by ISO -- and
the hurdles to implementing ODF (as documented -- and not documented by Microsoft) are so huge that it is doubtful that a full implementation will ever be completed by any independent third party.
Have you read Microsoft's EULAs recently? They pretty much take no responsibility for anything* -- If they don't want to fix it, you're toast! You don't even have the right (or the tools) to fix it yourself.
*(even their 'patent protection' program allows them to say 'stop using that software/feature',, with impunity.
This is fine for a sysadmin who is coming in and negotiating a new contract.
It's different for salaried staff who are on an existing contract. They can get the worst of both worlds:
On one hand, they get handed the crackberry and expected to respond to it on lunch, breaks and after hours.
on the other hand, it can be 2-4 years before the next round of contract talks which would deal with this change -- and, even then, the crackberry issue (if it's only one, small department affected) could just fall off the negotiating table due to time constraints, or whatever.
I'd say that it's fine for senior management who are expected to work overtime, handle issues when home or even on vacation and then factor that in to things like the time that they take off.
On the other hand, it really does need to be properly negotiated, beforehand, for middle and lower tiers who don't have the kinds of freedom that upper management have.
As the exec said: it can lead to things like telecomuting, etc. etc. etc.... but it can also lead to extended hours with no payback. I have no access to the department in question, but I'm going to assume that, if the workers raised enough of a fuss about it to have the project shelved, they probably have some fear that they were going to end up in something more akin to the latter situation.
Flash can accept a limited number of write cycles before it starts to fail. This is no big deal for thumb drives, but can start to be a limit for boot/swap drives.
The ext3-users list has had a number of postings about people using flash boot drives finding that they die after a being used for a while. I haven't tracked tha causes of the failures, but it's definitely something that I'd worry about (I expect that mounting the drive 'noatime' would probably help).
If I had a client who bought one of these things I would strongly suggest a stringent frequent backup policy.
Slashdot Mirror
When a support admin threatened to permanently kick him off of the system, he replied "That's OK. I won't be alive tomorrow."
Hmm... Elevated threat level, warnings of possible suicide attacks in the next day or so, and a fundamentalist muslim kid warning that he intends to die roughly in that time frame.... Sounds like something worth investigating (if only because we've got a kid that seems to be threatening to kill himeslf ... terrorism or no).
Being a Canadian, I call the Canadian 1-800 terrorism tip line (remember ... less than 6 months since 9/11) and find that it's been disconnected.
I then turn to US sources, and try to leave information in various places. Then I turn to the local US Consulate and leave an urgent message. After about 24 hours of trying various routes (both Canadian and US), I finally get a callback from a completely disinterested consular official who pretty much has the attitude of "explain to me why I shouldn't hang up on you".
Less than 6 months after 9/11, an orange threat level, and a suicidal fanatic on my site, and I'm fighting to explain why a US official should even take a report from me. "call us with any tips you might have" ... Yea, right!
That was the last time I took post 9/11 security fanaticism seriously. (other than as a threat to my civil rights).
Ultimately, AT&T plagiarized huge chunks of the BSD code into SYSV (which is why they sheepishly settled their case with the Berkeley Regents), and then what was left of SYSV and BSD were merged into Solaris.
Yes, it's now had 15-20 years of closed source development, but Solaris was built on top of a strong body of Open Source code.
Every time they have a vote to ban Sequoia, it turns out in Sequoia's favor -- no matter how many claim that they voted against them.
Now, 100 years later, we think that we have most of the kinks out,
Actually, just this week, we had a plumber in to our place to move a sink. He used a 'new and improved' connector that resulted in the hot water line popping loose. Thankfully it was during business hours, and we were able to turn off the supply line before we had a massive flood.
We called his company up and they were able to come over and fix the problem in a couple of hours.
Spacecraft designs, on the other hand, don't have millions of beta-testers and a house call isn't possible when you're 200million miles away. That's why they spend millions of dollars testing their systems, and why they still sometimes fail. That's also why they like redundant systems -- so that, when the inevitable glitches do happen, there's at least a reasonable hope that the most critical functions won't be lost.
In fact, if one chooses their graphics processor well, it's actually pretty rare to get a random box that has hardware requiring binary blobs for Linux functionality.
I can't see how having a thread indicating that such an idea is illegal (if not immoral) would be illegal. Forcing the sites admins to remove such a thread would (besides being an act of censorship) cause the admins additional pain because somebody else would come up with the same idea a week later and (seeing that nobody else had suggested it) post it again (once again requiring action on the part of the site admins).
I think that the biggest problem is that some people think that -- just because you get an officious-sounding demand, you have some requirement to follow it. The best thing to do would probably be to tell them that you have dealt with the problem in your own way (by publicly telling the OP that their idea is probably illegal), and that they're free to censor their own site if they're interested in doing so.
If these guys really want to go after the original developers in court over this supposed slight, chances are that they'll end up knee deep in GPL lawsuits. I seriously doubt that they're willing to go there.
(IANAL, but I have fun pretending to be one on slashdot).
How about a short vacation .... or a bottle of sugar pills?
Forgot to put the links to Saturday's Groklaw article and also the earlier Groklaw Analysis work (the later has links to analysis of an even earlier report).
Now that AMD/ATI has come over from the Dark Side, I expect that Nvidia and all of the other graphics chip manufacturers are going to be close behind. It may take them a year or two to work out the logistics, but they'll be here.
More and more people are moving over to Linux/BSD Free/Open software, and letting yourself be locked out of a growing market is the kind of things that CEOs and CTO's get fired for.
It used to be the case that manufacturers could peacefully close their eyes to the Open Source / Free communities and drink the Microsoft brand Kool-Aid because all of their competitors were doing the same thing. Now, however, with one of The big guns having committed to solid support of the Open Source universe, their less responsive competitors have a massive flank open that is going to have to be responded to.
If every MP that voted for this stupid law suddenly found their broadband connection being cut because their kid wanted to see the latest ((whatever)) video, this law would (hopefullly) get repealed within 6 weeks.
.... So it's like asking the company, "Would you like the code you paid for to be competing against your new product?"Not necessarily. It may be that the code he wrote was for internal uses. If so, it doesn't really compete with anything that the company sells. It might be just peachy for giving away. (That's a question for the company big brass to answer)
When asking something unusual of your boss(es), it's an intelligent thing to make it as easy as possible for them to say 'yes'.
The one thing that I hated about them was the limited battery life, so I took a couple of jell cell batteries and a dead cell phone battery from the , ripped out the Ni-Cad cells and replaced them with a voltage controller then I ran a coiled cable from the jell cells to the battery pack, and ... Voila! One cell-phone battery from hell (as far as the phone company was concerned) .. and a good bit more sturdy than the car-adapter plugs that Motorola sold. .... From measuring the current, I figured that that pack gave me 3 days standby PLUS 8 hours of talk time (back when a normal 'extended' battery barely gave you 8 hours of standby with no talk time).
I put the whole kit and kaboodle in fluke meter pouch and I had a nice portable phone that lasted the weekend. (and doubled as a 5-pound flail in case I was ever attacked by some idiot).
So, what does this have to do with indestructible???.... well, I used a bike to go everywhere and... every once in a while, the cell phone would somehow work it's way out of the pouch while I was riding along at 30MPH, hit the pavement and bounce around at the end of the battery cord until I noticed the problem and hit the brakes.
I'm told (and do truly believe) that somebody once lost a bet that he could destroy one of those phones with his bare hands... I actually made a half-hearted attempt at destroying mine when I gave up on the analog line. I'm pretty sure that, if I really wanted to, I could have kept that thing going today.
Oh, and how I got the phone: it was the on-call support phone. A workmate had dropped the phone in the ocean (salt water --- nasty thing to do to most electronics) and, even though it kept working, my boss wasn't willing to risk it dying in the middle of a support call. My personal cell phone had just gotten stolen so when they replaced the work phone I got the sea-water soaked one, and used it for over 5 years.
With a big enough pet rock (dropped from orbit), it might be a case of rock breaks gameboy.
These guys, on the other hand, seem to have been selling 'legitimate' copies of Microsoft products for real cheap -- That really does cut into Microsoft's market, which is people who are willing to pay for their products in return for either a clean conscience or to keep the MS police at bay.
Microsoft has no problems killing those pirates.
Warning:IfYouCanReadThisThenYouAreFarTooClo
Unfortunately, the tattoo artist was eaten by the tiger before he could finish the second tattoo. His death was never reported to the authorities.
Yeah, well, just remember to pull out the microchip(s) before you put it on.
Instead of "cool as a cucumber", we can now say "cool as the sun's surface". Of course, everybody who's not an astrophysicist (or a slashdot reader) will look at you like you've just grown a new head, but ... you can't have everything.
They were inexpensive until they became independent. Now he has to pay for their external housing unit.
How is using a different file format helping me to read older formats? This comment is not insighful, it compares apples to oranges.
A few things fall out of switching to ODF:(yeah, I know -- MS claims that OOXML will be 'open', but:
*(even their 'patent protection' program allows them to say 'stop using that software/feature',, with impunity.
It's different for salaried staff who are on an existing contract. They can get the worst of both worlds:
On one hand, they get handed the crackberry and expected to respond to it on lunch, breaks and after hours.
on the other hand, it can be 2-4 years before the next round of contract talks which would deal with this change -- and, even then, the crackberry issue (if it's only one, small department affected) could just fall off the negotiating table due to time constraints, or whatever.
I'd say that it's fine for senior management who are expected to work overtime, handle issues when home or even on vacation and then factor that in to things like the time that they take off.
On the other hand, it really does need to be properly negotiated, beforehand, for middle and lower tiers who don't have the kinds of freedom that upper management have.
As the exec said: it can lead to things like telecomuting, etc. etc. etc.
Flash can accept a limited number of write cycles before it starts to fail. This is no big deal for thumb drives, but can start to be a limit for boot/swap drives.
The ext3-users list has had a number of postings about people using flash boot drives finding that they die after a being used for a while. I haven't tracked tha causes of the failures, but it's definitely something that I'd worry about (I expect that mounting the drive 'noatime' would probably help).
If I had a client who bought one of these things I would strongly suggest a stringent frequent backup policy.