It may have been a case of second-order theft. Someone may have found the needed piece of code, and cut-and-pasted it into an email to his friend/co-worker... Not thinking much of the copyright, just happy to find the code. (possibly expecting it to simply be used as an example).
His friend -- who was doing the Linux driver would happily paste the headers (much cleaner and complete than his) and keep on working -- not thinking to ask where the code came from or what the copyright issues are.
I would rather expect that it is probably an error of an oversight nature, rather than malicious stealing of free code. Stealing free code in a free source environment jst doesn't make sense. It's an open source venue, for crying out loud. Someone was bound to notice, sooner or later.
anti-IP (there are plenty of dissenting voices on copyright)...
I don't think it's so much anti-IP as it is anti- the hardening of IP to the point of making information monopolies. Many of the people on slashdot actually depend (one way or the other) on IP for our income. I think we realize this, but we also realize that a good idea taken to it's extreme can be bad for society (and more specifically - us).
To put it more concrete: Most anti-Microsoft groupies aren't against Microsoft because they have large market share and IP pool. They're (we're) against MS using their market share and IP to:
limit competition
quash innovation (that's not theirs)
stiffle criticism (a 'la their Front Page contract)
take over other markets.
For me, one of the watershed moments was when they used the switch from windows 3.1 to '95 to force developers to also develop for NT -- and thus strengthen their foothold in the server markket. That was, for me, the first really blatent example of them using their position to take over other markets.
It looks like the original link works, once you remove the ".html" that someone seems to have eroneously added to the URL - probably someone who presumed that the original (unusual but correct) address was mangled by the software.
As for the article, itself, It looks like aninteresting development -- but I'm kinda disappointed that they're looking at a few years for the next substantive step.. At this rate, I may be retired by the time a 'real' quantum computer is produced.
The problem isn't just that windows users are dumb. The problem is that both windows users and windows are dumb. People doing default installs and installing the default patch kits for windows are getting hit with months-old bugs. Microsoft has, by hook or crook, made it non-intuitive for people to get a reasonably secure system set up. Many seem to end up accidently enabling an unpatched IIS that they don't even know is there to be patched.
When I set up Redhat 7.1, on the other hand, the 'medium' security setup was so secure, that I had to do some work to enable sendmail and the web packets through ipchains. I think that this is a far better result for unknowledgable users than the microsoft "just bend over and relax.. nothing's going to happen" attitude
As for people who routinely login as root, they at least have to know enough (on redhat) to turn of the 'annoying' warning about logging in as root. This is kinda like the navy pilot who thought "It'd be a lot easier to land if the turned of the wave off lights" (needless to say, he lost his wings).
A well designed system can do only so much about a dumb user, but we should at least ask for a well designed system.
My tax dollars are paying for WHAT???
Your tax dollars may be subsidizing it, but the experiment was apparently paid for by a grant from Coors. It went up in one of NASA's commercial experiment packs.
Re:Are you willing to defend your way of life?
on
Review: Tolkien's World
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Not just Waco and the Crusades...
Hitler was a Christian too. He actually studied to be a priest, and used the Jews' persecution of Christ as part of his justificatin for the holocaust (ignoring the fact that Jesus lived and died a Jew).
People have, and will continue to, use religion as a justification for their excesses. Let's not use it as an excuse to justify our own persecution of even more innocents.
It's kind of hard to find an upgrade for a system with a 1.13 GHz processor, a 32MB GeForce2Go video card, and a 15" 16x12 LCD.
Don't go getting jealous now!
Too damn late. You shoulda put the warning at the beginning of your post.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's worth some meditation that after Oklahoma, some people were quick to hunt down any Muslim to vent their anger against -- but when it turned out to be McVeigh, they didn't even THINK about taking their anger out against the nearest Christian, or American, or Vet.
I think it's because when painting with a wide brush threatens to paint ourselves, we're quicker to separate the extremists from the general population. Just like most Americans, Christians and Vets didn't agree with McVeigs actions (even those who agreed with his complaints), most Muslmims and palestinians disagree with the actions of the terrorists (even if they share the anger and/or pain).
BTW: Islam has strict rules against the killing of non-combatants -- especially women and children. In that context, most Muslims are horrified that these kinds of attacks could take place in the name of their religion.
If you remember the attack in Oklahoma, some people were real happy to attack random Muslims. Later, it turned out that the 'foreign terrorist' was actually a blonde US war vet. If they hadn't pinpointed McVeigh, we'd probably still be hunting down Muslims to use as scapegoats.
Apple was very conscious of the idea of backwards compatability. More important than being able to run new apps on old boxes was the fact that most of the code that ran on a 128K 8Mz mac is still able to run on a 2GB 800Mz powerPC. Your investment in older software is not generally obsoleted by the new OS.
Often, Backwards compatability problems can be avoided by careful design. Leave room for improvements. Designate certain structures as ignorable. Presume that the current incarnation of the code is not the final version.
Design for elegence. If the current code is relatively clean, then chances are that it will be easier to tack on an addition later on. Include stubs for improvements that you can forsee adding later on -- even if you can't percive the exact form of the improvement at the time. When you tack on the addition, try and do that elegantly too.
With languages, you can sometimes avoid backwards compatability problems by not using the latest and greatest features just because they're there. (it also allows you to avoid creeping featurism growing pains).
If using a new feature makes a big difference in the implementation of a solution, then use it, but at least document it. It keeps you more conscious of the break, and makes life easier on the people who have to rip out your code and re-implement it on the older system that you thought nobody was using.
Anecdote:
A friend of mine recently found out that that the security system where he had a storage locker was run on by apple IIc. The box was doing a fine job of what it was designed to do 20 years ago. Just because it's old, doesn't mean it won't work.
What are some of the "leverage points" which you see as most useful to the cause.. I.e. where can we put in effort that will be most multiplied in effect by the time it gets to the people that you're lobbying?
What sort of things are they most sensitive to, and what sorts of things get ignored because they hit the thickest parts of their skins?
Ananalogy:
If I, as a nonwhite, walk into a restaurant run by a bunch of racist biggots, what I'll notice is that i get really bad service from them. If I talk to my friends, what I'm likely to talk about is the bad service that I got, personally.
Now, someone who is more observent might note that any non-white gets that sort of treatment there. Others might note that even some white people get that sort of treatment, depending on their appearance.
all of those statements are accurate.
What trident is pulling support for is open-source driver writers. This doesn't just affect Linux, or even just XFree-86, if you want to split hairs. I expect, however, that the developers of other non-MS drivers are going to recognize that, even if their own OS isn't mentioned, that the loss of Linux support is going to affect them -- either as a result of using (substantially) the same drivers, or as a result of depending on a similar NDA. In any case, the headline is NOT misleading, since it mentions XFree86. It just happens that Linux users are one of the better known groups affected.
If you follow the thread, they mention that the most effective avenue might be to go after OEMs and discourage them from using Trident chipsets. An effective way of doing that may be to go one level further back for leverage.
Push the purchasers for your company and/or school to notify suppliers that you won't be accepting Trident chipsets because of this decision. Inform them that you need to be able to use your machines interchangably, and if Trident chipsets are not being supported by Linux, you won't be able to use them in your Linux boxes...
It's easier if you know that, in a crunch, you're not going to have interchangability problems with a machine because of Trident's unwillingness to support Linux. This leverages a possible 5-20% linux market share into a 100% purchase decision, on firm financial/operations grounds.
Something to note is that, even where Linux may not be a high percentage of a groups machine count, Linux boxes are often in a high profile or critical area. Being unable to deploy a machine into such a location could be a real impact to the company. If nothing else, it's just an unwelcome annoyance.
An OEM faced with a choice between losing a medium-large customer or switching to a 'widely supported chipset', is more likely to walk away from Trident. that sort of pressure is something that is likely to be 'heard' by the company.
When I worked for an ISP doing Email admin, I had an interaction with the security person at an Australian ISP (this was a couple of years ago -- before their censorship act). He said that Australia had some pretty strong privacy legislation that prevented them from tracking what people were doing with their connection --
This included the purpose of my call, which was the tracking and killing of a SPAM source.
His comment was that this (accidental) protection of spammers made Australia a haven for spammers. My thought is that, if they can't nail spammers for spamming -- even with complaints -- they should not be able to do any sort of 'big brother' monitoring either.
Of course, the web page that mentions this problem mentions a program that helps you find your forwarding links -- but it's a Perl program....
It's bad enough that they need Free Software to keep Hotmail afloat as it is.
I can't se Microsoft using a Free Software solution on their boxes too...
Part of the problem, may be that NT doesn't respond well to remote admin.. I can see some intern going from box to box, plugging and unplugging keyboards and mice, and doing the upgrades.
"Oops! I must have missed 3 of the 85 boxes that I was supposed to patch!"
Haven't you personally had many experiences in which changing one variable (say, plugging a printer into a
different USB port) immediately precedes something else, seemingly unrelated, "breaking"?
Far more likely to be a problem with Windows, than with Linux. Linux is built as a bunch of relatively independant modules. Windows is designed as a monolithic piece of spaghetti code
(well, maybe not quite that bad, but "Oh my god, the Web browser is surgically attached to the core OS!" is a pretty bad sign. I have also seen things like changing the settings on the printer spooler messing up the mouse driver (!.. Only on windows)).
Though why the partition table was nuked by a static
discharge, I don't know.
If the head happened to be over the partition sector and/or the static charge caused what looked like a spurious write request to the heads, you could scramble all or part of a sector. I wouldn't expect it to be common, but anything could happen in the death throes of a shocked machine.
Hmm... More likely, actually, that the static mangled a couple of bits on an access request to the hard disk. That would seem a MUCH more likely cause of a bad write (offhand... I'm not an EE).
I think that part of what has happened is that the pipeline between state of the art work station graphics and desktop, which used to be about 3 years, has all but disappeared, as the consumer market has gotten to the point of being willing to play with the state of the art.
Because anything fast enough to be state of the art has to be small enough to fit on one die, if you're gonna make ten VSLI chips, you might as well make ten thousand, and sell them on the retail market. Most of the cost is in making the master..
Anyone in the hardware end of things to support/refute this thesis? --
That said, I and some friends are working on a short for next years Gathering LAN, and you can do a lot with 3DS MAX, a Pinnacle DC2000
and a good SVHS VCR. But rendering times suck:)
You think rendering times suck now? In 1992, I managed a graphics lab, where about 30 students did a bunch of short animations... Each pair of students allowed 450 frames each (15 seconds at full speed). The rendering took MONTHS of CPU time. Our render farm was a set of RS-6000s and SGIs that were near the commercial state of the art at the time (total of about 12 machines worth about $1M, retail). all of that for what ended up being less than 10 minutes of video.
The file server had a 1GB disk (5/25" full-height SCSI drive) dedicated to the graphics frames... As stuff got printed to laser disk, it was dumped onto an 8MM tape to make room for the rest.
Not that I'm complaining.. It was fun and interesting at the time we did it. We were pushing what was possible with the available tech, and I still enjoy watching the resulting videos, from time to time. --
There is also a big distinction between "we'll release him soon" and "we'll consider it later, but no promises". Given what they said, it would be completely within thier promise if they considered releasing him (for about 3 seconds) and decided not to. They could even decide that the will release him, but they didn't even say that that was likely. In the political world those could be seen as platitudes along the line of:
We know that it'd get us a lot more trouble to just say know, so we're not going to come close to saying that. On the other hand, If we are going to release him, it's gonna be some time in the future, after we've completed our own agenda.
Diplomacy is the fine art of telling a lion "Nice kitty, kitty, kitty" while you slowly reach for a nice big rock --
Slashdot Mirror
It may have been a case of second-order theft. Someone may have found the needed piece of code, and cut-and-pasted it into an email to his friend/co-worker... Not thinking much of the copyright, just happy to find the code. (possibly expecting it to simply be used as an example).
His friend -- who was doing the Linux driver would happily paste the headers (much cleaner and complete than his) and keep on working -- not thinking to ask where the code came from or what the copyright issues are.
I would rather expect that it is probably an error of an oversight nature, rather than malicious stealing of free code. Stealing free code in a free source environment jst doesn't make sense. It's an open source venue, for crying out loud. Someone was bound to notice, sooner or later.
People with full-time jobs may not feel that they have much time, but often have $5-500 that they're willing to donate to a good cause.
70,000 people wit $15 each makes a cool million dollars that could really support a bunch of high school and college students in a political endeavor.
I don't think it's so much anti-IP as it is anti- the hardening of IP to the point of making information monopolies. Many of the people on slashdot actually depend (one way or the other) on IP for our income. I think we realize this, but we also realize that a good idea taken to it's extreme can be bad for society (and more specifically - us).
To put it more concrete: Most anti-Microsoft groupies aren't against Microsoft because they have large market share and IP pool. They're (we're) against MS using their market share and IP to:
-
limit competition
- quash innovation (that's not theirs)
- stiffle criticism (a 'la their Front Page contract)
- take over other markets.
For me, one of the watershed moments was when they used the switch from windows 3.1 to '95 to force developers to also develop for NT -- and thus strengthen their foothold in the server markket. That was, for me, the first really blatent example of them using their position to take over other markets.As for the article, itself, It looks like aninteresting development -- but I'm kinda disappointed that they're looking at a few years for the next substantive step.. At this rate, I may be retired by the time a 'real' quantum computer is produced.
When I set up Redhat 7.1, on the other hand, the 'medium' security setup was so secure, that I had to do some work to enable sendmail and the web packets through ipchains. I think that this is a far better result for unknowledgable users than the microsoft "just bend over and relax.. nothing's going to happen" attitude
As for people who routinely login as root, they at least have to know enough (on redhat) to turn of the 'annoying' warning about logging in as root. This is kinda like the navy pilot who thought "It'd be a lot easier to land if the turned of the wave off lights" (needless to say, he lost his wings).
A well designed system can do only so much about a dumb user, but we should at least ask for a well designed system.
As to why it's not mentioned, this article pre-dates the need for C#. Sun's suit against Microsoft wasn't that advanced in early-mid '97.
My tax dollars are paying for WHAT???
Your tax dollars may be subsidizing it, but the experiment was apparently paid for by a grant from Coors. It went up in one of NASA's commercial experiment packs.
Hitler was a Christian too. He actually studied to be a priest, and used the Jews' persecution of Christ as part of his justificatin for the holocaust (ignoring the fact that Jesus lived and died a Jew).
People have, and will continue to, use religion as a justification for their excesses. Let's not use it as an excuse to justify our own persecution of even more innocents.
My question is:
In the light of this week's tragedy, is some PR goon gonna try and get them to rename The Two Towers?
Don't go getting jealous now!
Too damn late. You shoulda put the warning at the beginning of your post.
I think it's because when painting with a wide brush threatens to paint ourselves, we're quicker to separate the extremists from the general population. Just like most Americans, Christians and Vets didn't agree with McVeigs actions (even those who agreed with his complaints), most Muslmims and palestinians disagree with the actions of the terrorists (even if they share the anger and/or pain).
BTW: Islam has strict rules against the killing of non-combatants -- especially women and children. In that context, most Muslims are horrified that these kinds of attacks could take place in the name of their religion.
If you remember the attack in Oklahoma, some people were real happy to attack random Muslims. Later, it turned out that the 'foreign terrorist' was actually a blonde US war vet. If they hadn't pinpointed McVeigh, we'd probably still be hunting down Muslims to use as scapegoats.
Often, Backwards compatability problems can be avoided by careful design. Leave room for improvements. Designate certain structures as ignorable. Presume that the current incarnation of the code is not the final version.
Design for elegence. If the current code is relatively clean, then chances are that it will be easier to tack on an addition later on. Include stubs for improvements that you can forsee adding later on -- even if you can't percive the exact form of the improvement at the time. When you tack on the addition, try and do that elegantly too.
With languages, you can sometimes avoid backwards compatability problems by not using the latest and greatest features just because they're there. (it also allows you to avoid creeping featurism growing pains).
If using a new feature makes a big difference in the implementation of a solution, then use it, but at least document it. It keeps you more conscious of the break, and makes life easier on the people who have to rip out your code and re-implement it on the older system that you thought nobody was using.
Anecdote: A friend of mine recently found out that that the security system where he had a storage locker was run on by apple IIc. The box was doing a fine job of what it was designed to do 20 years ago. Just because it's old, doesn't mean it won't work.
What sort of things are they most sensitive to, and what sorts of things get ignored because they hit the thickest parts of their skins?
If I, as a nonwhite, walk into a restaurant run by a bunch of racist biggots, what I'll notice is that i get really bad service from them. If I talk to my friends, what I'm likely to talk about is the bad service that I got, personally.
Now, someone who is more observent might note that any non-white gets that sort of treatment there. Others might note that even some white people get that sort of treatment, depending on their appearance.
all of those statements are accurate.
What trident is pulling support for is open-source driver writers. This doesn't just affect Linux, or even just XFree-86, if you want to split hairs. I expect, however, that the developers of other non-MS drivers are going to recognize that, even if their own OS isn't mentioned, that the loss of Linux support is going to affect them -- either as a result of using (substantially) the same drivers, or as a result of depending on a similar NDA. In any case, the headline is NOT misleading, since it mentions XFree86. It just happens that Linux users are one of the better known groups affected.
Push the purchasers for your company and/or school to notify suppliers that you won't be accepting Trident chipsets because of this decision. Inform them that you need to be able to use your machines interchangably, and if Trident chipsets are not being supported by Linux, you won't be able to use them in your Linux boxes...
It's easier if you know that, in a crunch, you're not going to have interchangability problems with a machine because of Trident's unwillingness to support Linux. This leverages a possible 5-20% linux market share into a 100% purchase decision, on firm financial/operations grounds.
Something to note is that, even where Linux may not be a high percentage of a groups machine count, Linux boxes are often in a high profile or critical area. Being unable to deploy a machine into such a location could be a real impact to the company. If nothing else, it's just an unwelcome annoyance.
An OEM faced with a choice between losing a medium-large customer or switching to a 'widely supported chipset', is more likely to walk away from Trident. that sort of pressure is something that is likely to be 'heard' by the company.
This included the purpose of my call, which was the tracking and killing of a SPAM source.
His comment was that this (accidental) protection of spammers made Australia a haven for spammers. My thought is that, if they can't nail spammers for spamming -- even with complaints -- they should not be able to do any sort of 'big brother' monitoring either.
Lawyers don't read slashdot, but sometimes their legal assistants will, and then reply for them.
It's bad enough that they need Free Software to keep Hotmail afloat as it is. I can't se Microsoft using a Free Software solution on their boxes too...
Part of the problem, may be that NT doesn't respond well to remote admin.. I can see some intern going from box to box, plugging and unplugging keyboards and mice, and doing the upgrades.
"Oops! I must have missed 3 of the 85 boxes that I was supposed to patch!"
Far more likely to be a problem with Windows, than with Linux. Linux is built as a bunch of relatively independant modules. Windows is designed as a monolithic piece of spaghetti code
(well, maybe not quite that bad, but "Oh my god, the Web browser is surgically attached to the core OS!" is a pretty bad sign. I have also seen things like changing the settings on the printer spooler messing up the mouse driver (! .. Only on windows)).
If the head happened to be over the partition sector and/or the static charge caused what looked like a spurious write request to the heads, you could scramble all or part of a sector. I wouldn't expect it to be common, but anything could happen in the death throes of a shocked machine.
Hmm... More likely, actually, that the static mangled a couple of bits on an access request to the hard disk. That would seem a MUCH more likely cause of a bad write (offhand... I'm not an EE).
Because anything fast enough to be state of the art has to be small enough to fit on one die, if you're gonna make ten VSLI chips, you might as well make ten thousand, and sell them on the retail market. Most of the cost is in making the master..
Anyone in the hardware end of things to support/refute this thesis?
--
You think rendering times suck now? In 1992, I managed a graphics lab, where about 30 students did a bunch of short animations... Each pair of students allowed 450 frames each (15 seconds at full speed). The rendering took MONTHS of CPU time. Our render farm was a set of RS-6000s and SGIs that were near the commercial state of the art at the time (total of about 12 machines worth about $1M, retail). all of that for what ended up being less than 10 minutes of video.
The file server had a 1GB disk (5/25" full-height SCSI drive) dedicated to the graphics frames... As stuff got printed to laser disk, it was dumped onto an 8MM tape to make room for the rest.
Not that I'm complaining.. It was fun and interesting at the time we did it. We were pushing what was possible with the available tech, and I still enjoy watching the resulting videos, from time to time.
--
That should have been:
We know that it'd get us a lot more trouble to just say no.
(not know).
--
--