First - I'm going to impart a little bit of information to the multitudes concerning CSS on DVD.
I know the above because I worked for a semiconductor company that was considering doing a DVD decoder chip. The company reviewed the requirements for getting the CSS codes. Some of the relevant details from the contract. You have to essentially brain-wipe your engineers if they leave the company(not an exageration either.) If the consortium requires a change in the implementation you must get it to silicon in 6 months(not easy for fabless companies.) The folks supplying content can hold your company liable for violating/exposing the CSS (Xing is going to have LOTS of trouble here me thinks..) Summary - you sign away your company to the consortium. Note - all of this is from year old memory...
The contract was SO draconian that major parts of it were invalid under CA law.
Now with that said - if someone comes along and reverse-engineers your encryption scheme so they can play DVD devices without belonging to the consortium and subjecting themselves to the awful contractual agreements...this would be a GOOD thing! Building a player for instance that used the OS version of the decryption algorithm wouldn't be violating anyones' copyright. This would only be adding competition to the consortium and help drive prices down... why is this a bad thing?
Having laws that allow clean-room style reverse-engineering are draconian in their own right and I oppose them for the above reasons. What if Apple had won their look-and-feel lawsuit years ago -whoops, no X Windows as an example.
That is exactly the point - not everyone is interested in learning to be a sys-admin. School districts are very hard-pressed for funds as an example. They have an existing hardware/software investment they want to extend as far as possible. If Linux offers an answer that allows them to integrate new services on old hardware - WONDERFUL. That sells. Offering a consulting service to provide that kind of setup sells.
I'm a hardware engineer. I work in the ASIC world. I spend a great amount of my time building CUSTOM hardware for different companies. There is a HUGE amount of private IP that the world has no access to beyond buying the little black piece of plastic with legs on it and using it in a larger board design.
Alan is correct when we talk about "commodity computer systems" but incorrect when we talk at the component level of those systems. For that matter - do you imagine Sony gives you the schematics for their walkman? It plays a tape recorded in a standard manner, or a CD recorded in a standard manner - but the hardware implementation to accomplish that playback is highly proprietary.
(Okay - so Alan and I can get schematics to our ham rigs..but that is about it..;-)
Thus - the closed nature of hardware depends on where you draw the viewing line. There is LOTS of IP under the hood that isn't open.
Most likely YES. Technocrat.net is edited by Bruce Perens. Perens was the author of the Open Source Definition amongst other things. He was in contact with Corel about the GPL violations in their beta test agreement earlier. Makes sense that he'd know doesn't it? Steve
I've got a few problems with what this gentleman says. He says that Raymond comes down too hard on the FSF, and that Linux couldn't have happened if the tools from GNU hadn't been there. I was around then, and it would have been harder, but other tools WERE in place at the time. Linux sprang from a disastisfaction with Minix among other things. There were tools that were built from this starting point that would have made the difference. I think he is wrong on this point.
He also talks about a "Special case of Applied Science" for what OSS folks do. Why not just call it "Engineering???" Why does he have to make up a new set of words for an old concept?
Generally - this article comes off as something aimed at deflating ESR's sails. He's using inflamatory words such as Marxism to describe what ESR wrote. I didn't see that concept in Eric's writtings myself. Is there a hidden agenda some place?
Actually the megawatt hour isn't nearly THAT rediculous. Ever heard of polution credits? Companies are already trading polution credits with each other - which if tied to energy production gets us right there.
As for the Star Trek credit - obviously 1 credit equals 100 tribbles!
Yes it should matter - I've been around PROFESSIONAL Sys Admins in a mixed Sun/Windows shop. These guys applied EVERY fix to the Sun OS as they came out, or as they installed new system. PERIOD! These guys set up the community - AGAIN - and they used an application which indeed had holes in it. Probably much to the suprise of the guys that wrote the religious (holey) software. The OS should have been the final line of defense with no known ways of gaining root privilege. The second part of this proposition was the sys-admin's responsibility. It just isn't THAT hard!
What is funny is that we've returned to the late 60's/early 70's. Back then the manufacturer GAVE you copies of their OS so it would ease THEIR maintenance problems. You had the code. If you could fix it...you did, then gave them the results to share with other users.
Linux (GPL/BSD) goes beyond this though with the viral nature and not locking things up in copyright, so you can use the code as a base for other work.
So I don't see the big deal in praising Sun for doing something IBM use to do 30 years ago.
You don't have things setup correctly. If you use netscape, you can see the content @home provides. I've been using it for 2 1/2 years with no problems ( at least from the linux side - @home service -that's another story.)
What scared me about the concept of the merger would be the possibility of having my email with @aol.com after it all of a sudden.
Not so - as an example the FCC is now requiring all license applications(filled thru the web no less) to include an SSN - They claim the authorization from a 1996 Debt act which happens to read as follows:
(i)(1) IN GENERAL.Section 7701 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new sub-sections: (c)(1) The head of each Federal agency shall require each person doing business with that agency to furnish to that agency such persons taxpayer identifying number.
(2) For purposes of this subsection, a person shall be considered to be doing business with a Federal agency if the person is
(A) a lender or servicer in a Federal guaranteed or insured loan program administered by the agency;
(B) an applicant for, or recipient of, a Federal license, permit, right-of-way, grant, or benefit payment administered by the agency or insurance administered by the agency;
(C) a contractor of the agency;
(D) assessed a fine, fee, royalty or penalty by the agency;
and
(E) in a relationship with the agency that may give rise to a receivable due to that agency, such as a partner of a borrower in or a guarantor of a Federal direct or insured loan administered by the agency.
Just happened to have that in my clip board;-)
Further, the state of CA is requiring it on all drivers licenses now. Sheesh!
The problem with this logic is that I'm allowed 1) Reveal that I'm a beta tester, and 2) Publish reviews of the software under the license they DID send out!
So if I found that it has hole x and y and made it public - I'm entitled to do that even on the agreement they sent out - let alone under GPL(which really doesn't cover this aspect...but if they followed the GPL - I could get the source and see why!)
Dvorak is in the business of generating hits for their website. He's infamous for creating flame bait. See the stuff from a few weeks ago relating to his comments about the Ibook (calling it girlie...)
I could choose to dispute his claims concerning IRC, others have done that already. Just look at the style of the article -it's completely incoherent. First - Linux can't be good because it doesn't run IRC, then he babbles about no standard choice for X environments (how that relates to IRC I haven't a clue), etc. It's just a strung-together bunch of inuendo and half-truths with no significant research behind it.
Just ignore him - we've all got more productive things to be doing - like writting useful free code!
The US is a large enough market to go it's own way pretty much anytime it wants too. As it has countless times. See the cell phone situation as an example.
This isn't the US being a bully either. We didn't mandate that anyone else follow the standard, only US broadcasters are required too(FCC doesn't have extra-territorial authority last time I looked..) I don't see what's wrong with the US looking after it's own interests in it's own way? What nation state doesn't do that? There was both a political and economic arguement to maintain backwards compatibility since EVERYONE will have to be broadcasting digitally fairly soon.
Tell me - which makes more sense. Designing for compatibility or causing the 250 million people in this country who own NTSC TV's to junk their hardware? Boy- now that WOULD be a boon to the industry, and do the consumer no good at all.
First - I agree with the author. Why does should a system come out of the box running httpd, ftp, or whatever?
The OTHER problem that stops us from world domination is the GUI! X can be impossible to get working - especially on newer hardware(My EOne for example)
A couple of days ago there was an announcement here of yet another distro that takes care of one issue: http://www.demolinux.org
This distro runs exclusively off of a CDROM - you can take linux to any machine! One of the tricks they pulled that got it to run on my EOne that neither the latest RH, Mandrake, or Suse could do was bring up X! They used the new Frame Buffer server. It isn't accelerated but it works GREAT! So if the demolinux people were to go a step further and tighten up their system to not have a large number of separate demons running - we might be pretty close to what the author was asking for! (Actually haven't looked at what demons they HAVE enabled on this distro -maybe it's already there?)
The US went thru a fairly long, involved, somewhat politically charged, but also technically motivated selection process for digital TV. The bottom line is that the format was chosen so that the MILLIONS of existing TV's didn't become instantly useless!
Now some of you will think that backward's compatibility is a BAD thing. From a marketing and sales position - it's mandatory.
My Dad was in Finland last year (the home base of Nokia) and he had exactly this same arguement with several guys - my Dad made the compatibility arguement with them - they had no retort.
Consider what happened recently with genetically created corn. Turns out that the polin kills off butterflies!?! This was a totally un-forseen consequence of what otherwise would be a benign use of genetics.
I've got REAL concerns that we don't have the knowledge or wisdom to go creating artificial forms at this level because we don't know how to predict the outcome if they're released into the biosphere. We don't have a clue as to how to forcast interaction with other life forms at different levels of the food chain if something we engineer is introduced either intentionally or by accident.
I'd much rather these kind of experiments were put on hold until they can be done in a place outside the earth's biosphere - say in space perhaps.
I wrote/maintained the FAQ for the alt.dcom.slip-emulators usenet group for awhile - it's been included in the release of slirp for eons -and hasn't been updated for just as long.
Slirp maybe one of the first Open Source projects that helped put a company out of business! TIA, "The Internet Adapter" has been mentioned here a few times already. TIA initially did Slip only, and would have PPP Real soon now. Slirp came on the scene, and was working pretty well after a couple releases. We complained to Dan about PPP,and a clever programmer in Finland(lots of those around here;-) adapted the then current PPP driver from Linux to Slirp! TIA didn't have it for several months after that - at which point they were probably too late. Slirp just acquired a working PPP driver in a period of a few weeks!
You make some good points about WHY you should stay in school - and I think it comes down to if you are planning a career IN acadamia - then a Phd is the cost of entry. If you are going to be a working stiff - then the graduate degree is indeed a waste of time. It never pays for itself. I was told when I was starting out in industry than an MS degree was worth maybe an extra 5K to start - and the difference between my income an the guy with the MS degree would disappear at 5 years out. Turned out to be true. I've worked with LOTS of Phds over the last 20 years. As for choice jobs - well they were doing the same stuff I was;-) VERY VERY FEW Phds do research in industry (CS and EE that is.) Mostly you do development cause companies are more intrested in product. The R part of R&D doesn't show up very often in this industry from my observation. Thus the advanced degree doesn't help. My two cents worth - after taking inflation into account - not even worth that.
Slashdot Mirror
First - I'm going to impart a little bit of information to the multitudes concerning CSS on DVD.
I know the above because I worked for a semiconductor company that was considering doing a DVD decoder chip. The company reviewed the requirements for getting the CSS codes. Some of the relevant details from the contract. You have to essentially brain-wipe your engineers if they leave the company(not an exageration either.) If the consortium requires a change in the implementation you must get it to silicon in 6 months(not easy for fabless companies.) The folks supplying content can hold your company liable for violating/exposing the CSS (Xing is going to have LOTS of trouble here me thinks..) Summary - you sign away your company to the consortium. Note - all of this is from year old memory...
The contract was SO draconian that major parts of it were invalid under CA law.
Now with that said - if someone comes along and reverse-engineers your encryption scheme so they can play DVD devices without belonging to the consortium and subjecting themselves to the awful contractual agreements...this would be a GOOD thing! Building a player for instance that used the OS version of the decryption algorithm wouldn't be violating anyones' copyright. This would only be adding competition to the consortium and help drive prices down... why is this a bad thing?
Having laws that allow clean-room style reverse-engineering are draconian in their own right and I oppose them for the above reasons. What if Apple had won their look-and-feel lawsuit years ago -whoops, no X Windows as an example.
enuff said.
That is exactly the point - not everyone is
interested in learning to be a sys-admin. School districts are very hard-pressed for funds as an example. They have an existing hardware/software investment they want to extend as far as possible. If Linux offers an answer that allows them to integrate new services on old hardware - WONDERFUL. That sells. Offering a consulting service to provide that kind of setup sells.
That is the point me thinks.
I'm a hardware engineer. I work in the
;-)
ASIC world. I spend a great amount of my
time building CUSTOM hardware for different
companies. There is a HUGE amount of private
IP that the world has no access to beyond buying
the little black piece of plastic with legs on
it and using it in a larger board design.
Alan is correct when we talk about "commodity
computer systems" but incorrect when we talk
at the component level of those systems. For
that matter - do you imagine Sony gives you the
schematics for their walkman? It plays a
tape recorded in a standard manner, or a CD
recorded in a standard manner - but the
hardware implementation to accomplish that
playback is highly proprietary.
(Okay - so Alan and I can get schematics to
our ham rigs..but that is about it..
Thus - the closed nature of hardware depends on
where you draw the viewing line. There is LOTS
of IP under the hood that isn't open.
I was on a flight from Boston to San Jose
;-)
last nite, and the guy across the isle from
me was reading this book...
Spooky
Most likely YES. Technocrat.net is edited by Bruce Perens. Perens was the author of the Open Source Definition amongst other things. He was in contact with Corel about the GPL violations in their beta test agreement earlier. Makes sense that he'd know doesn't it? Steve
I've got a few problems with what this gentleman says. He says that Raymond comes down too hard on the FSF, and that Linux couldn't have happened if the tools from GNU hadn't been there. I was around then, and it would have been harder, but other tools WERE in place at the time. Linux sprang from a disastisfaction with Minix among other things. There were tools that were built from this starting point that would have made the difference. I think he is wrong on this point.
He also talks about a "Special case of Applied Science" for what OSS folks do. Why not just call it "Engineering???" Why does he have to make up a new set of words for an old concept?
Generally - this article comes off as something aimed at deflating ESR's sails. He's using inflamatory words such as Marxism to describe what ESR wrote. I didn't see that concept in Eric's writtings myself. Is there a hidden agenda some place?
Actually the megawatt hour isn't nearly THAT rediculous. Ever heard of polution credits? Companies are already trading polution credits with each other - which if tied to energy production gets us right there.
As for the Star Trek credit - obviously 1 credit equals 100 tribbles!
Yep, and the national editor will be VI!!!!!!
down with Emacs - death to all meta keys!
You mean like that /. effect?
Yes it should matter - I've been around PROFESSIONAL Sys Admins in a mixed Sun/Windows shop. These guys applied EVERY fix to the Sun OS as they came out, or as they installed new system. PERIOD! These guys set up the community - AGAIN - and they used an application which indeed had holes in it. Probably much to the suprise of the guys that wrote the religious (holey) software. The OS should have been the final line of defense with no known ways of gaining root privilege. The second part of this proposition was the sys-admin's responsibility. It just isn't THAT hard!
What is funny is that we've returned to the late 60's/early 70's. Back then the manufacturer GAVE you copies of their OS so it would ease THEIR maintenance problems. You had the code. If you could fix it...you did, then gave them the results to share with other users.
Linux (GPL/BSD) goes beyond this though with the viral nature and not locking things up in copyright, so you can use the code as a base for other work.
So I don't see the big deal in praising Sun for doing something IBM use to do 30 years ago.
You don't have things setup correctly. If you
;-)
use netscape, you can see the content @home
provides. I've been using it for 2 1/2 years
with no problems ( at least from the linux
side - @home service -that's another story.)
What scared me about the concept of the merger
would be the possibility of having my email
with @aol.com after it all of a sudden.
Shivers down my spine
Then what do you call that thing over off
of San Thomas here in Silicon Valley?
Yeah right, no factories - sure.....
Not so - as an example the FCC is now
;-)
requiring all license applications(filled
thru the web no less) to include an SSN -
They claim the authorization from a 1996 Debt
act which happens to read as follows:
(i)(1) IN GENERAL.Section 7701 of title 31, United States
Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new sub-sections:
(c)(1) The head of each Federal agency shall require each
person doing business with that agency to furnish to that agency
such persons taxpayer identifying number.
(2) For purposes of this subsection, a person shall be considered
to be doing business with a Federal agency if the person is
(A) a lender or servicer in a Federal guaranteed or insured
loan program administered by the agency;
(B) an applicant for, or recipient of, a Federal license,
permit, right-of-way, grant, or benefit payment administered
by the agency or insurance administered by the agency;
(C) a contractor of the agency;
(D) assessed a fine, fee, royalty or penalty by the agency;
and
(E) in a relationship with the agency that may give rise
to a receivable due to that agency, such as a partner of a
borrower in or a guarantor of a Federal direct or insured
loan administered by the agency.
Just happened to have that in my clip board
Further, the state of CA is requiring it on all
drivers licenses now. Sheesh!
Steve
"plus their lawyers are probably freaking
/.ers' would like to assist in the guys' trip!
out over all this."
I've got to ask - Does a lawyer being
freaked out bother anyone? I'm willing to bet that most
;-)
Steve
The problem with this logic is that I'm allowed 1) Reveal that I'm a beta tester, and 2) Publish reviews of the software under the license they DID send out!
So if I found that it has hole x and y and made it public - I'm entitled to do that even on the agreement they sent out - let alone under GPL(which really doesn't cover this aspect...but if they followed the GPL - I could get the source and see why!)
Dvorak is in the business of generating hits for their website. He's infamous for creating flame bait. See the stuff from a few weeks ago relating to his comments about the Ibook (calling it girlie...)
I could choose to dispute his claims concerning
IRC, others have done that already. Just look at the style of the article -it's completely incoherent. First - Linux can't be good because it doesn't run IRC, then he babbles about no standard choice for X environments (how that relates to IRC I haven't a clue), etc. It's just a strung-together bunch of inuendo and half-truths with no significant research behind it.
Just ignore him - we've all got more productive things to be doing - like writting useful free code!
Oddly enough - you're answer ignores reality.
The US is a large enough market to go it's
own way pretty much anytime it wants too. As
it has countless times. See the cell phone
situation as an example.
This isn't the US being a bully either. We
didn't mandate that anyone else follow the
standard, only US broadcasters are required
too(FCC doesn't have extra-territorial
authority last time I looked..) I don't see
what's wrong with the US looking after it's
own interests in it's own way? What nation
state doesn't do that? There was both a
political and economic arguement to maintain
backwards compatibility since EVERYONE will
have to be broadcasting digitally fairly soon.
Tell me - which makes more sense. Designing
for compatibility or causing the 250 million
people in this country who own NTSC TV's to
junk their hardware? Boy- now that WOULD be
a boon to the industry, and do the consumer
no good at all.
THINK!
First - I agree with the author. Why does
should a system come out of the box running
httpd, ftp, or whatever?
The OTHER problem that stops us from
world domination is the GUI! X can be
impossible to get working - especially
on newer hardware(My EOne for example)
A couple of days ago there was an announcement
here of yet another distro that takes care
of one issue: http://www.demolinux.org
This distro runs exclusively off of a CDROM -
you can take linux to any machine! One of the
tricks they pulled that got it to run on my
EOne that neither the latest RH, Mandrake, or
Suse could do was bring up X! They used the
new Frame Buffer server. It isn't accelerated
but it works GREAT! So if the demolinux
people were to go a step further and tighten
up their system to not have a large number
of separate demons running - we might be
pretty close to what the author was asking
for! (Actually haven't looked at what
demons they HAVE enabled on this distro -maybe
it's already there?)
Steve
The US went thru a fairly long, involved,
somewhat politically charged, but also
technically motivated selection process
for digital TV. The bottom line is that
the format was chosen so that the MILLIONS
of existing TV's didn't become instantly
useless!
Now some of you will think that backward's
compatibility is a BAD thing. From a
marketing and sales position - it's mandatory.
My Dad was in Finland last year (the home
base of Nokia) and he had exactly this
same arguement with several guys - my Dad
made the compatibility arguement with them -
they had no retort.
Nuff said.
Steve
Consider what happened recently with genetically
created corn. Turns out that the polin kills off
butterflies!?! This was a totally un-forseen
consequence of what otherwise would be a
benign use of genetics.
I've got REAL concerns that we don't have the
knowledge or wisdom to go creating artificial
forms at this level because we don't know
how to predict the outcome if they're released
into the biosphere. We don't have a clue as
to how to forcast interaction with other
life forms at different levels of the food
chain if something we engineer is introduced
either intentionally or by accident.
I'd much rather these kind of experiments
were put on hold until they can be done in
a place outside the earth's biosphere - say
in space perhaps.
I wrote/maintained the FAQ for the alt.dcom.slip-emulators usenet group for
;-) adapted the then current PPP
;-)
awhile - it's been included in the release
of slirp for eons -and hasn't been updated
for just as long.
Slirp maybe one of the first Open Source
projects that helped put a company out of
business! TIA, "The Internet Adapter" has
been mentioned here a few times already.
TIA initially did Slip only, and would have
PPP Real soon now. Slirp came on the scene,
and was working pretty well after a couple
releases. We complained to Dan about PPP,and
a clever programmer in Finland(lots of those
around here
driver from Linux to Slirp! TIA didn't have
it for several months after that - at which
point they were probably too late. Slirp
just acquired a working PPP driver in a
period of a few weeks!
Ah the memories
Steve Wilson
Yes
You make some good points about WHY you should stay in school - and I think it comes down to if you are planning a career IN acadamia - then a Phd is the cost of entry. If you are going to be a working stiff - then the graduate degree is indeed a waste of time. It never pays for itself. I was told when I was starting out in industry than an MS degree was worth maybe an extra 5K to start - and the difference between my income an the guy with the MS degree would disappear at 5 years out. Turned out to be true. I've worked with LOTS of Phds over the last 20 years. As for choice jobs - well they were doing the same stuff I was ;-) VERY VERY FEW Phds do research in industry (CS and EE that is.) Mostly you do development cause companies are more intrested in product. The R part of R&D doesn't show up very often in this industry from my observation. Thus the advanced degree doesn't help. My two cents worth - after taking inflation into account - not even worth that.
Does that mean he couldn't get into
Cal Poly SLO's CS program?? A hacker -
hurumph!