The Philadelphia Inquirer has recently run a couple of stories on this. You can see the first story in which they reported the tracking and the follow-up story which says they will stop (and in which they admitted they were doing tracking).
A year ago? About 4-5 years ago, I worked for one of those firms[1] and they used the auto-dialer then. Let me tell you, having an unpronounceable name come up on your screen two seconds after the person answers is a real bitch.
[1] Yes, I know. I couldn't stand it or stand myself for doing it, so I saw the light and quit after two weeks.
Got binaries? Source distribution is only required if you distribute the binaries, and only to those to whom you have distributed the binaries.
Sony could charge US$5,000 for the software if they wanted to; there's still nothing in the GPL that requires they make it available for public download. All they have to do is to give away the source (or a written offer for the source at nominal cost) to those who purchase the product. Oh, and they can't restrict your ability to redistribute it, either.
Unfortunately, no. Downgrading is a major pain in the ass.
Well, that's not entirely accurate. By default, downloaded packages are kept in/var/cache/apt/archives; they stay there until you do an "apt-get clean" (which deletes all the previously-downloaded packages) or "apt-get autoclean" (which deletes everything that's not currently mentioned in the packages lists; old versions, for example). If you upgrade and find that, oh, login, for example, is broken, you can just run "dpkg -i/var/cache/apt/archives/login_oldversion_arch.deb" . (Which is why I tend not to do an autoclean until I've tested the new testing or unstable packages for a bit, or do it just before running an apt-get update.)
On the other hand, if you upgrade to testing or unstable, then decide you want to go back to stable, you're pretty much screwed. Packages tend to split between releases (for example, package foo might split into foo (or foo-bin) and libfoo). It becomes very difficult to go back and it would probably be just as easy to do a reinstall.
Bottom line: apt excels at upgrading and sucks horribly at downgrading. But I still love it.;^)
(As someone who has had their place robbed twice in the past two years, I find the low capture/prosecution rates depressing; it just doesn't seem to be a priority with law enforcement. Sigh. Oh well, if anyone tries to hit me again, they'll be on candid camera:-)
Oh, you mean just like jwz?;^) (BTW, if you read a little further, you'll see the guy didn't get caught. sigh)
I commend them for their efforts. This is so much like the spirit of Free software -- if you don't like the way it's being done, then do something about it.
Great idea, really -- only one person has to get really big files across the wire and then they all share them.
I predict we'll see a lot more of this if the price of bandwidth doesn't come down soon...
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler (later Lord Alexander Fraser Woodhouslee), in "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic," published 1776.
I started with zipslack since I had a zip drive but not a cdburner at the time. I got it working from the zip drive, but I couldn't get it installed right on the hard drive for some reason that I've since forgotten.
I got started in Linux about two years ago myself and started much the same way as you (with zipslack). I remember that when I tried to "cp -a" (according to the zipslack FAQ that Pat V. provided), Bad Things happened. I narrowed it down to the/dev directory -- even trying to do a simple ls on/dev resulted in problems, of the kernel panic variety, I believe. I asked at one of my local LUG meetings and nobody knew. Shortly after this, a new kernel version was released (2.2.13, I believe), and in the Changelog it noted that there was a UMSDOS filesystem bug that was fixed (that was present from 2.2.6-2.2.12, I think). This was Slackware 4 with kernel 2.2.6.
Just a little background in case you were interested.
With apt, you have to type "apt-get update" and "apt-get {,dist-}upgrade", or click a button in a GUI, or add it to your crontab, or whatever, before it will do anything. Point is, you have to take an action, affirmatively state "Yes, download stuff" before it will do anything.
Not that I necessarily think that the XP auto-updater is a bad thing; I haven't come to a conclusion for myself yet. But the parallel you drew is flawed.
Re:Reminds me of my ? to RMS about a free BIOS
on
LinuxBIOS Gains Steam
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If his life is in danger and a medical team chooses to hook him up to one of their systems that runs commercial software, then RMS isn't the guy using it, is he?
Even if he requested to be put on life support, this wouldn't be a contradiction. (More in a moment.)
If you can't find a free BIOS replacement for your motherboard, do you really think it's logical to go on a rampage and refuse to boot up that machine ever again, until it can be replaced with an open-source BIOS? I think not. A reasonable individual would say "Well, either I care enough about this to develop my own BIOS - or I don't."
Actually, how do you think the GNU project started? They didn't toggle front-panel switches to write their first programs. There is a history of the GNU project which has a section which explains this:
Donated computers
As the GNU project's reputation grew, people began offering to donate machines running UNIX to the project. These were very useful, because the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a UNIX system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of UNIX at all.
UNIX was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU project's philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But, applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing free replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.
But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine's operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.
I've found that regular data CD-ROMs work just fine for music, both in a computer and in a stand-alone CD player. These don't have the RIAA tax on them, as you know. I saw a pack of 100 on sale for ~$25 at my local Micro Center recently...
Hey, I think I like this guy. It looks like he doesn't pull any punches with anybody:
Lockyer's mouth also has gotten him in trouble, as it did when he suggested that Enron Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lay, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing in the collapse of the Houston energy giant, should be locked up with an affectionate inmate named Spike.
One form of FEC that even your stereo components might already do is Reed-Solomon encoding; you can look this up in CS textbooks.
Reed-Solomon encoding has begun to be used on Usenet in the form or parity, or.par, files. The idea being that you create x parity files for a multipart post and post them along with the actual data files. Then if you get an incomplete or corrupted file while downloading, you simply download a parity file for each file you're missing. There are at least two different implementations for Windows, and a GPL'd implementation available. In the source tarball for parchive, there is a text file (called rs.doc) that explains the mathematics behind Reed-Solomon encoding as well as C implementation details.
For those of us that don't have a CS textbook handy.;-)
If you, as a computer enthusiast, would be opposed to being licensed and registered to run your choice of operating system, perhaps you can begin to see why firearms enthusiasts are opposed to such a system as well.
We've already lost most of the Bill of Rights. Much more and I'll be leaving.
Word docs could get piped through msdoc2txt (If it only existed!).
Actually itdoesexist. Additionally, you can view MS-Word, HTML, etc, inline. You need to define a conversion routine in your/etc/mailcap or ~/.mailcap:
And then put lines in your.muttrc similar to the following:
auto_view text/html
auto_view application/msword
Then the HTML and MS-Word attachments will show up as plain text right in mutt's internal pager. I'm sure there are similar procedures for other mail readers. More information is available.
You know, there are ports other than 80 and protocols other than HTTP. Just because somebody isn't offering HTTP on port 80 at www.domain.tld doesn't mean the domain isn't being used.
Slashdot Mirror
The Philadelphia Inquirer has recently run a couple of stories on this. You can see the first story in which they reported the tracking and the follow-up story which says they will stop (and in which they admitted they were doing tracking).
Well, if you're sick and tired of this, like I am, there's always Ogg Tarkin that could use an extra hand or two.
Actually, it's even easier than that. Think "DVD is to VHS as CDs are to cassettes." Only better.
One way to avoid having your long-distance service slammed is to have a "PIC freeze" put on your phone line...
[1] Yes, I know. I couldn't stand it or stand myself for doing it, so I saw the light and quit after two weeks.
Sony could charge US$5,000 for the software if they wanted to; there's still nothing in the GPL that requires they make it available for public download. All they have to do is to give away the source (or a written offer for the source at nominal cost) to those who purchase the product. Oh, and they can't restrict your ability to redistribute it, either.
Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself.
Nah, that's what's called a "beowulf cluster" today. ;^)
Ogg Tarkin is in the works. Unfortunately, it's Not Here Yet, but if Vorbis is any indication, it will be good when it gets here.
Well, that's not entirely accurate. By default, downloaded packages are kept in /var/cache/apt/archives; they stay there until you do an "apt-get clean" (which deletes all the previously-downloaded packages) or "apt-get autoclean" (which deletes everything that's not currently mentioned in the packages lists; old versions, for example). If you upgrade and find that, oh, login, for example, is broken, you can just run "dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/login_oldversion_arch.deb" . (Which is why I tend not to do an autoclean until I've tested the new testing or unstable packages for a bit, or do it just before running an apt-get update.)
On the other hand, if you upgrade to testing or unstable, then decide you want to go back to stable, you're pretty much screwed. Packages tend to split between releases (for example, package foo might split into foo (or foo-bin) and libfoo). It becomes very difficult to go back and it would probably be just as easy to do a reinstall.
Bottom line: apt excels at upgrading and sucks horribly at downgrading. But I still love it. ;^)
Oh, you mean just like jwz? ;^) (BTW, if you read a little further, you'll see the guy didn't get caught. sigh)
Great idea, really -- only one person has to get really big files across the wire and then they all share them.
I predict we'll see a lot more of this if the price of bandwidth doesn't come down soon...
Actually, Mr. Fusion was in the first movie. Not until the very end, but it was there nonetheless. :)
Just a little background in case you were interested.
Not that I necessarily think that the XP auto-updater is a bad thing; I haven't come to a conclusion for myself yet. But the parallel you drew is flawed.
I've found that regular data CD-ROMs work just fine for music, both in a computer and in a stand-alone CD player. These don't have the RIAA tax on them, as you know. I saw a pack of 100 on sale for ~$25 at my local Micro Center recently...
I'm using 0.9.6. That said, I downloaded ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6.2/u nix/linux22/plugins/jre131i.xpi, then started Mozilla as root and used it to open that file. Then I restarted the Mozilla instance that I was running under my own user account. (Not sure if that's required or not.) See if that helps.
For those of us that don't have a CS textbook handy. ;-)
We've already lost most of the Bill of Rights. Much more and I'll be leaving.
text/html; /usr/bin/w3m -dump -T text/html '%s'; copiousoutput; description=HTML Text; nametemplate=%s.html
application/msword; word2text %s; copiousoutput
And then put lines in your .muttrc similar to the following:
auto_view text/html
auto_view application/msword
Then the HTML and MS-Word attachments will show up as plain text right in mutt's internal pager. I'm sure there are similar procedures for other mail readers. More information is available.
You know, there are ports other than 80 and protocols other than HTTP. Just because somebody isn't offering HTTP on port 80 at www.domain.tld doesn't mean the domain isn't being used.