er... why is this good? how often do you boot a machine?
we've got about half a dozen linux servers here and an equal number of linux desktops. we rarely reboot the servers (and with dual power supplies we've even kept them up while reconfiguring the power to the server room - think long extension cords) and the desktops always boot the same kernel.
from what you described it's like putting altitude gauges and flap controls in a car. sure, it looks neat, but why?
gee, you failed to respond to the hint i see. ok, so you're content that ftp servers can be watched for illegal content (though you're ignoring the fact that most software, like most music, is under a much more restrictive license).
then what about email? i could easily email music files around, and i could do them anonymously. combine irc and email and have a program hide the complexity of both and suddenly you have a method of "trading files" that would be akin to napster. does that mean email and irc should be banned?
look, napster is bad for record companies for TWO reasons.
the openly discussed reason is that it's used for illegal copies of music they own. i'll agree one thousand percent that that is wrong. i'll also agree that's a large portion of the time.
however, it can also be used by musicians who want a publishing outlet outside of the major record labels. a band or solo artist could come up with a pay.com and then get people to share their music. (the grateful dead used a slightly less hitech way to do this) generate some hype for their web page (think blair witch project meets this is spinal tap) and they'll get fans to pay them direct. i've often sent money to artists whose work i appreciate - at no request of theirs.
in that scenario the artist wins - they get more money from each fan (though i'm sure less fans will pay); the listener wins - because they get a better feeling of supporting the artists *they* chose and they get more choice since *they* do the edits; but suddenly there's not too much for the record companies (tours? web site design?).
i honestly think that's what scares the record companies the most. and that's why i have no pity for them (and truly despise the bootleggers for giving the record industry a ruse to hide behind). of course decss hasn't had any documented cases of being used to break copy protection and it's being attacked, so maybe the bootleggers should be congratulated for not feeding money into the lawyers.
good point. and this sunsite thing for organising software, that's got to go too. you go to a store and pay $500 for s/w and they're tryin to tell me that i can get it for *free*. yer jokin me.
and the there's this whole vegetable section in grocery stores. i mean, c'mon, you can get practically all the ingedients you need for ketchup in there for 1/10th the cost. that's got to go.
plus they let kids buy orange juice. you just know they let it sit out, ferment and then just get wasted...
(hint, just because *some* people use something for illegal purposes doesn't mean we should all be denied)
first, i think rob's idea of a button saying that the comment is intended for/. or further publication is great. of course as i look down i see score +1 tick box, anon tick box, a format pull down... i fear posting to/. will become akin to wading through warning labels in dept stores...
the whinging and screeching over this has been absolutely disgusting. rob and his crew - and that includes jon katz - have taken an issue they care about and have attempted to get information out on it. free software takes a similar tack in releasing stuff that's almost perfect in the idea that it can be improved and used. in the future/. folks will do dead tree (and other media) versions in new and (hopefully) better ways.
rob's comment that andover, et al are made up of *people* just can't be emphasised enough. what feedback on your work (and your mistakes) do you want to get? what are you giving out in public forums?
nothing i suppose, but it serves a different purpose. cscope is the *only* (and i seriously mean only) thing i miss about sco. that's it. (and you can run the sco version on linux x86 with iBCS).
it's great to see it released, too bad i mostly do perl stuff now.:)
yes theoretically the several dozen authors for any given gpl project could release under another license. but they'd all have to agree. the bsd license doesn't require that.
as for your rather nasty comments i was merely replying to a comment that the bsd license was designed to help share code. it isn't. it's designed to share software. the audience of developers that can use bsd software is theoretically larger since ones that want to release binary only software can do so. bsd proponents will surely feel this is true. obviously some developers who are keen on the gpl won't want that, but since the s/w development industry has been largely binary driven i would guess that the bsd license is more attractive.
that is not correct. think about it: joe author releases a book and sells it for $20 under a copyright that allows people to read it in the home. then they change the license and say you need to pay them $20 each time you read it.
they could release new versions of the code under a binary license, but not change the old copyrights. in a sense it's a contract and needs the consent of both parties.
the fsf owns the copyrights on several projects (not linux though), and it does so in order to help fight violations. only the copyright holder can sue for copyright violations - and i'm sure joe developer isn't interested in hiring lawyers...
Finally, since the TrustedBSD code is being released under a 2-clause BSD license, the OpenBSD folks are quite free to incorporate the code, and in fact I expect them to do so.
After all, that's what the BSD license is all about:-)
actually, it's quite possible (under the bsd license) for the trustedbsd developers to offer binary only versions - thereby making sure that openbsd would not be able to incorporate those changes.
the bsd license is not all about allowing other people to share your code since at some point someone can hide it away with their changes.
a former communist country which has switched to the much touted capitalist sytem and is now mired in economic misery is the first nation to take a major step towards privatizing their space program.
"If child pornography is illegal, and someone posts it up on an anonymous webserver, anonymously, *someone* needs to be held responsible for getting rid of the content."
huh? first, your sentence doesn't seem to parse. this legislation does nothing to make someone responsible for removing the content. now i think you meant making someone responsible for the content.
why does someone need to be responsible for the content? if i enclose a whole bunch of child porn in an envelope and mail it anonymously is the letter carrier responsible? is the phone company responsible for obscene calls? no.
both organisations will try to help police and may even be required to do so. that's fine - require web sites to take down illegal contnet, and require them to try to trace the source if that's so important. not too keen on that either, but it makes more sense.
considering the media's treatment of pretty much all politicians i think it's safe to say "share the warmth" is their attitude. perticularly in the us very few people seem to believe politicians should be allowed to have private lives and if i was in their shoes for a few steps i think my attitude would be "well if it's good enough for me, let's let them in on the fun."
if people love privacy so much, perhaps they should be trying to help *all* the people, and not just themselves. after all, the reasoning most people give for "full disclosure" for politicians is "we don't trust them" - it seems logical that the same reasoning should apply to citizens...
I'm wondering if you actually read the article. I know it's long and has words with multiple syllables, but it actually addresses every single question and implied question you asked.
several years ago i saw a cartoon of a prehistoric cave painter saying to his friend, "that's not real art." as he pointed to a man painting on a canvas with an easel. today it's the people who work in oils, watercolors, etc who say the same about their graphic artist cousins.
it's just a choice of tool. a painter uses charcoal, a brush, pigments, types of canvas and other such material to create their visions. are they not artisits even though they use tools made by others?
the creators of propaganda have created an amusing storyline and some nice graphics. it took time and creative energy to do so.
so what is art? you could make an entire/. style site just on that single question alone. some of us like propaganda and some don't. why belittle their work?
the last comment is the best. "[run windows bins w/o] something idiotic like vmware or wine"
right.
the only other choice left is wabi.
here's a little clue. to drive a car you need to learn how do do it. you know now, right? ok, now go drive a semi. or drive a car in a different country - maybe even one where they drive on the other side. drive a forklift. drive a motorcycle.
they all require training, and all they accomplish is moving you from point a to point b.
think of windows as steak and potatoes. think of linux as a stew. and think of your skills as a knife and fork. yes, you can eat your linux stew with a knife and fork, but it's hard. it would be easier to just use a spoon.
finally consider that most people on the planet have never used a computer - it's just as easy for them to get the spoon as the fork and knife. and since they generally don't have a lot of money, which os is the right price for them?
it's not well known, but bob metcalfe runs the mail server performance under load benchmarks in conjunction with slashdot. it's a simple formula:
let p be the number of posts in 4 hours on this story let P be the number of posts in 4 hours on all stories let t be the average time for mail delivery during that period let T be the average response time normally.
let r be p/P*10 - the rating of the story let d be t/T - the amount of degredation
so for a/. story magnitude r, the mail server responds in d times the normal amount of time.
redhat's been around for a shorter period of time? really?
windows 2000 hasn't even been released, redhat's bugzilla tracks bugs through about 6 releases.
i know the pundits refer to linux as "new and untested," but a significant percentage of w2k code is completely new and unproven in a production level environment.
they'd be immune to being ddos *servers* but anything that speaks ip is at risk. apparently the freebsd (and no doubt openbsd) and to a lesser extent linux have some tunable params to make them less susceptible, but i doubt there's any complete defence.
10: they did research 01: linux users wrote in to explain their mistake 00: sun's lawyers called them and gave them the definition of libel and defamation
this is prompted by your interview, specifically the q from q*bert.
i've read you in the past on/., and i like some, dislike other articles. you write pretty well, and you tend to lay it all out on the page. i find that admirable, and above all else i'd give you thumbs up just for that.
it seems in many ways that you're trying to do three things with your writing on/.: fit in, understand, and explain. i note that q*bert used the phrase "lay people." amusing really. it implies a coven of technical wizards and a mass of unwashed digital illiterates. the haves and the have nots of the information age. simplistic, and yet there's a sense that it's true. it comes up a lot here in ireland about the information poor, and the widening gap that's leaving some people out.
how much will you need to learn, and what works will you need to create to prove your guru-hood? the fact that you spoke out before reaching guru - will that raise the bar for the level you'll need to maintain? questions you might want to put to the community.
as an aside, stephen king starts out one of his books that he penned as richard bachman by discussing the idea that the beatles had about touring under a false name to see what it would be like to start again. he deemed it impossible, but on the net it seems quite reasonable that one could reinvent oneself regularly on the net. maybe something to try.
anyway, those three motives. q*bert's comment also seems to relate to fitting in, and perhaps if it's really true that geeks fail to fit in when young that they would try hard to do so later on - and be just as exclusionary as their adversaries before. it was true for me, though i try not to exclude people. are you just drawn because of some unique quality of the community, or did you yourself not fit in as a child?
i'm not incredibly keen on "the community" concept. not sure if it fits, but i suppose that would be part of understanding. it is used a lot, sometimes in a way that seems false, sometimes not. and perhaps that too is an element of understanding. and as a writer it seems obvious that you would want to explain that to others.
all in all i for one do like the fact that you write for/.. remember that people are more likely to pass along negative then positive feedback - a shame really. i think in some ways you seem to straddle the gurus and newbies. holding mirrors up to both. people don't always like what they see.
however to say that windows systems are immune is a complete lie. anyone remember melissa? virus writers to date haven't really played with the net, but the ability to write up a virus that attacks people you don't like seems rather simple (to the virus crowd).
all one would do is write up a virus that would check a set of web pages - there are hundreds of free hosting sites - and snarf a list of ip addresses once a day or so. then it would do a DoS attack on one of those hosts at random.
Slashdot Mirror
I see Mr. Gates is hanging around /. these days...
er... why is this good? how often do you boot a machine?
we've got about half a dozen linux servers here and an equal number of linux desktops. we rarely reboot the servers (and with dual power supplies we've even kept them up while reconfiguring the power to the server room - think long extension cords) and the desktops always boot the same kernel.
from what you described it's like putting altitude gauges and flap controls in a car. sure, it looks neat, but why?
gee, you failed to respond to the hint i see. ok, so you're content that ftp servers can be watched for illegal content (though you're ignoring the fact that most software, like most music, is under a much more restrictive license).
then what about email? i could easily email music files around, and i could do them anonymously. combine irc and email and have a program hide the complexity of both and suddenly you have a method of "trading files" that would be akin to napster. does that mean email and irc should be banned?
look, napster is bad for record companies for TWO reasons.
the openly discussed reason is that it's used for illegal copies of music they own. i'll agree one thousand percent that that is wrong. i'll also agree that's a large portion of the time.
however, it can also be used by musicians who want a publishing outlet outside of the major record labels. a band or solo artist could come up with a pay.com and then get people to share their music. (the grateful dead used a slightly less hitech way to do this) generate some hype for their web page (think blair witch project meets this is spinal tap) and they'll get fans to pay them direct. i've often sent money to artists whose work i appreciate - at no request of theirs.
in that scenario the artist wins - they get more money from each fan (though i'm sure less fans will pay); the listener wins - because they get a better feeling of supporting the artists *they* chose and they get more choice since *they* do the edits; but suddenly there's not too much for the record companies (tours? web site design?).
i honestly think that's what scares the record companies the most. and that's why i have no pity for them (and truly despise the bootleggers for giving the record industry a ruse to hide behind). of course decss hasn't had any documented cases of being used to break copy protection and it's being attacked, so maybe the bootleggers should be congratulated for not feeding money into the lawyers.
good point. and this sunsite thing for organising software, that's got to go too. you go to a store and pay $500 for s/w and they're tryin to tell me that i can get it for *free*. yer jokin me.
and the there's this whole vegetable section in grocery stores. i mean, c'mon, you can get practically all the ingedients you need for ketchup in there for 1/10th the cost. that's got to go.
plus they let kids buy orange juice. you just know they let it sit out, ferment and then just get wasted...
(hint, just because *some* people use something for illegal purposes doesn't mean we should all be denied)
GROW UP FOLKS!
/. or further publication is great. of course as i look down i see score +1 tick box, anon tick box, a format pull down... i fear posting to /. will become akin to wading through warning labels in dept stores...
/. folks will do dead tree (and other media) versions in new and (hopefully) better ways.
first, i think rob's idea of a button saying that the comment is intended for
the whinging and screeching over this has been absolutely disgusting. rob and his crew - and that includes jon katz - have taken an issue they care about and have attempted to get information out on it. free software takes a similar tack in releasing stuff that's almost perfect in the idea that it can be improved and used. in the future
rob's comment that andover, et al are made up of *people* just can't be emphasised enough. what feedback on your work (and your mistakes) do you want to get? what are you giving out in public forums?
nothing i suppose, but it serves a different purpose. cscope is the *only* (and i seriously mean only) thing i miss about sco. that's it. (and you can run the sco version on linux x86 with iBCS).
:)
it's great to see it released, too bad i mostly do perl stuff now.
actually i think you're getting more if you're not getting windows, but yes, you're correct. :)
yes theoretically the several dozen authors for any given gpl project could release under another license. but they'd all have to agree. the bsd license doesn't require that.
as for your rather nasty comments i was merely replying to a comment that the bsd license was designed to help share code. it isn't. it's designed to share software. the audience of developers that can use bsd software is theoretically larger since ones that want to release binary only software can do so. bsd proponents will surely feel this is true. obviously some developers who are keen on the gpl won't want that, but since the s/w development industry has been largely binary driven i would guess that the bsd license is more attractive.
that is not correct. think about it: joe author releases a book and sells it for $20 under a copyright that allows people to read it in the home. then they change the license and say you need to pay them $20 each time you read it.
they could release new versions of the code under a binary license, but not change the old copyrights. in a sense it's a contract and needs the consent of both parties.
the fsf owns the copyrights on several projects (not linux though), and it does so in order to help fight violations. only the copyright holder can sue for copyright violations - and i'm sure joe developer isn't interested in hiring lawyers...
After all, that's what the BSD license is all about :-)
actually, it's quite possible (under the bsd license) for the trustedbsd developers to offer binary only versions - thereby making sure that openbsd would not be able to incorporate those changes.
the bsd license is not all about allowing other people to share your code since at some point someone can hide it away with their changes.
a former communist country which has switched to the much touted capitalist sytem and is now mired in economic misery is the first nation to take a major step towards privatizing their space program.
er...
i'm wondering how much hate mail he'll get from people who don't get it...
"If child pornography is illegal, and someone posts it up on an anonymous webserver, anonymously, *someone* needs to be held responsible for getting rid of the content."
huh? first, your sentence doesn't seem to parse. this legislation does nothing to make someone responsible for removing the content. now i think you meant making someone responsible for the content.
why does someone need to be responsible for the content? if i enclose a whole bunch of child porn in an envelope and mail it anonymously is the letter carrier responsible? is the phone company responsible for obscene calls? no.
both organisations will try to help police and may even be required to do so. that's fine - require web sites to take down illegal contnet, and require them to try to trace the source if that's so important. not too keen on that either, but it makes more sense.
Thanks for all the info, but just out of curiousity is this story a record for the most number of links in a non-quickie post?
considering the media's treatment of pretty much all politicians i think it's safe to say "share the warmth" is their attitude. perticularly in the us very few people seem to believe politicians should be allowed to have private lives and if i was in their shoes for a few steps i think my attitude would be "well if it's good enough for me, let's let them in on the fun."
if people love privacy so much, perhaps they should be trying to help *all* the people, and not just themselves. after all, the reasoning most people give for "full disclosure" for politicians is "we don't trust them" - it seems logical that the same reasoning should apply to citizens...
I'm wondering if you actually read the article. I know it's long and has words with multiple syllables, but it actually addresses every single question and implied question you asked.
several years ago i saw a cartoon of a prehistoric cave painter saying to his friend, "that's not real art." as he pointed to a man painting on a canvas with an easel. today it's the people who work in oils, watercolors, etc who say the same about their graphic artist cousins.
/. style site just on that single question alone. some of us like propaganda and some don't. why belittle their work?
it's just a choice of tool. a painter uses charcoal, a brush, pigments, types of canvas and other such material to create their visions. are they not artisits even though they use tools made by others?
the creators of propaganda have created an amusing storyline and some nice graphics. it took time and creative energy to do so.
so what is art? you could make an entire
the last comment is the best. "[run windows bins w/o] something idiotic like vmware or wine"
right.
the only other choice left is wabi.
here's a little clue. to drive a car you need to learn how do do it. you know now, right? ok, now go drive a semi. or drive a car in a different country - maybe even one where they drive on the other side. drive a forklift. drive a motorcycle.
they all require training, and all they accomplish is moving you from point a to point b.
think of windows as steak and potatoes. think of linux as a stew. and think of your skills as a knife and fork. yes, you can eat your linux stew with a knife and fork, but it's hard. it would be easier to just use a spoon.
finally consider that most people on the planet have never used a computer - it's just as easy for them to get the spoon as the fork and knife. and since they generally don't have a lot of money, which os is the right price for them?
your last point is incorrect: intel did demo nt. not at linux world, but at their initial announcement.
it's not well known, but bob metcalfe runs the mail server performance under load benchmarks in conjunction with slashdot. it's a simple formula:
/. story magnitude r, the mail server responds in d times the normal amount of time.
let p be the number of posts in 4 hours on this story
let P be the number of posts in 4 hours on all stories
let t be the average time for mail delivery during that period
let T be the average response time normally.
let r be p/P*10 - the rating of the story
let d be t/T - the amount of degredation
so for a
redhat's been around for a shorter period of time? really?
windows 2000 hasn't even been released, redhat's bugzilla tracks bugs through about 6 releases.
i know the pundits refer to linux as "new and untested," but a significant percentage of w2k code is completely new and unproven in a production level environment.
they'd be immune to being ddos *servers* but anything that speaks ip is at risk. apparently the freebsd (and no doubt openbsd) and to a lesser extent linux have some tunable params to make them less susceptible, but i doubt there's any complete defence.
top 10 reasons why they retracted the article:
10: they did research
01: linux users wrote in to explain their mistake
00: sun's lawyers called them and gave them the definition of libel and defamation
gee, i wonder which?
this is prompted by your interview, specifically the q from
/., and i like some, dislike other
/.: fit in, understand, and explain. i note that
/..
q*bert.
i've read you in the past on
articles. you write pretty well, and you tend to lay it all out
on the
page. i find that admirable, and above all else i'd give you
thumbs up
just for that.
it seems in many ways that you're trying to do three things with
your
writing on
q*bert used
the phrase "lay people." amusing really. it implies a coven of
technical wizards and a mass of unwashed digital illiterates.
the haves
and the have nots of the information age. simplistic, and yet
there's a
sense that it's true. it comes up a lot here in ireland about
the
information poor, and the widening gap that's leaving some people
out.
how much will you need to learn, and what works will you need to
create
to prove your guru-hood? the fact that you spoke out before
reaching
guru - will that raise the bar for the level you'll need to
maintain?
questions you might want to put to the community.
as an aside, stephen king starts out one of his books that he
penned as
richard bachman by discussing the idea that the beatles had about
touring under a false name to see what it would be like to start
again.
he deemed it impossible, but on the net it seems quite reasonable
that
one could reinvent oneself regularly on the net. maybe something
to
try.
anyway, those three motives. q*bert's comment also seems to
relate to
fitting in, and perhaps if it's really true that geeks fail to
fit in
when young that they would try hard to do so later on - and be
just as
exclusionary as their adversaries before. it was true for me,
though i
try not to exclude people. are you just drawn because of some
unique
quality of the community, or did you yourself not fit in as a
child?
i'm not incredibly keen on "the community" concept. not sure if
it
fits, but i suppose that would be part of understanding. it is
used a
lot, sometimes in a way that seems false, sometimes not. and
perhaps
that too is an element of understanding. and as a writer it
seems
obvious that you would want to explain that to others.
all in all i for one do like the fact that you write for
remember
that people are more likely to pass along negative then positive
feedback - a shame really. i think in some ways you seem to
straddle
the gurus and newbies. holding mirrors up to both. people don't
always
like what they see.
i knew someone would point it out.
however to say that windows systems are immune is a complete lie. anyone remember melissa? virus writers to date haven't really played with the net, but the ability to write up a virus that attacks people you don't like seems rather simple (to the virus crowd).
all one would do is write up a virus that would check a set of web pages - there are hundreds of free hosting sites - and snarf a list of ip addresses once a day or so. then it would do a DoS attack on one of those hosts at random.