I don't know about most Americans, but I think guns are absolutely necessary to keep the government in line.
So you're saying all the European governments aren't "in line"?
If you have so little trust in your government that you want a gun against them, you should leave the country at once and live with people you do trust... Remember, the government isn't just some strange people ruling the country. The government is the people's (mostly indirect, but still) representation, in case of a democracy at least. If the US should be considered a democracy is left as an exercise for the reader.
You're advising people to buy guns?? I thought it was bad enough that so many people in the US bought guns without being told to. Pushing people to buy guns is a good way to increase deadly accidents. The only valid reason to me for buying a gun would be for protection, but that one is only valid in the wild west, which as far as I know doesn't exist anymore.
Then again, I'm happily living in Europe, where we have lots of political problems, but at least people aren't allowed to carry guns. This is one of the reasons that I don't intend to ever visit the US.
where Americans can quickly and easily ask your Representative to co-sponsor the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act
So why would my representative here in the Netherlands care about what Americans tells her? And what would it help if she sponsors some American legislation?
Linus did not write GNU/Linux -- most of that OS was written by other people, with most of the userland tools and libraries that make it function coming from the GNU project (hence the GNU/ monicker).
In fact, the system should be called GNU even if the FSF didn't write a single line of code.
If I put something together out of blocks, none of which I made, I still get to choose the name for my creation. Then if someone exchanges one block for something he made himself, that doesn't change the name of the creation (unless it was significantly changing it, so the original is not recognisable).
This is very much what happened. The FSF put a system together and gave it a name. They even wrote a substatial amount of code to get the system working, but that doesn't really matter. Linus wrote a kernel and plugged it in (with quite some help from the FSF, btw, as it is not a trivial thing to do).
For historical reasons people call the whole system Linux, not GNU. RMS is quite right to say "I made the system, I get to choose the name". The name is GNU. Only for PR reasons or clarity could you consider calling it GNU/Linux, or "a Linux-based GNU system".
No, it was indeed something that was never done before, and it still isn't done anywhere else, as far as I know. What we're doing is not just using a microkernel as the basis of the OS, but making the OS consist of a collection of mutually untrusting servers.
All other microkernel approaches have a load of servers (or even just one) which all run as "root" and just trust each other. Of course there is some trust by the Hurd servers, but not more than needed.
This is supposed to enhance security and stability, although only The Real World(tm) can show if that is significant, or even true at all.
I can't help but wonder if all you guys really don't understand what RMS means, or just pretend. I'll try to explain it anyway.
GNU is an operating system. Hurd is the kernel of the GNU operating system. Because this kernel is part of the GNU project, it is called GNU Hurd, similar to "Microsoft Windows".
Linux is also a kernel. It can be used with the GNU operating system instead of its native kernel. The result is still a GNU operating system, but some people prefer to mention "Linux" in it for several reasons. In that case it should be called "GNU/Linux", as "a combination of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel", but definitely not "GNU Linux", which would mean "Linux, made by/as part of GNU".
"GNU/Emacs" means the GNU operating system, combined with Emacs. That doesn't make much sense, as Emacs is part of the GNU operating system. It should be called "Emacs" or "GNU Emacs", if you want to state explicitly that it is part of the GNU project.
An exception is "GNU/Hurd". This is just GNU, which runs its native kernel, GNU Hurd. The reason that this phrasing can be useful is because "GNU/Linux" can also be called "GNU". To differentiate between "GNU/Linux" and "GNU/Hurd", it makes sense to write them thusly.
That wasn't so hard, now was it? If I see any of you making that mistake again, I'll subtract 10 points from your score. Now get back to work.
Am I misunderstanding you, or do you propose to update these values (one record per page, quite a lot I would say) on every context switch?
I also fail to see why microkernels would be helped by this, as I think L4 allows all the things you want (in a technically different way, but who cares).
No, this will not be possible. Executables must be linked with the exact libraries they use. Libc is very much dependant on the underlying system, which is quite different for Hurd and Linux (or even for Hurd on Mach and Hurd on L4).
So all programs must be recompiled, which means you will need two systems.
In fact, L4 does even less. Memory management is mostly done in user space (of course there are some kernel tables which hold information about allocation though), interrupts aren't "serviced" by the kernel, other than sending a message to a user space handler. Interfacing the hardware is also done from user space. The only real thing L4 does is inter process communication (IPC) and thread creation/destruction.
Yes. The Hurd-on-L4 bases all its communication on a capability system. Programs running on it may or may not explicitly make use of it (it's all wrapped for the POSIX interface, so they obviously don't see it), but they will use it underneath anyway.
A good thing about this is of course that things like chroot are very easily implemented (there are many more good things, as I'm sure you know), but there is one problem: Any program which uses it is not portable to other systems. That means most programs will not want to use it. Which is a pity, of course, as it is a great system.
It's not an L4-based kernel. L4 is the kernel, the rest, while part of the OS, is not. Most of the rest will simply reuse the code from the Hurd on Mach, so it really isn't a different project. It only has a different structure underneath (which isn't visible to anyone but system programmers, except for performance and security).
that sounds like it has a lot of promise and may address problems that both Linux and commercial kernels have with modularity and extensibility.
It's not the kernel which will solve them, but we hope they are indeed solved by the project.
This new kernel should get a snazzy new name to get that message across.
How about calling the kernel L4, as their makers named it? (Just like we all call a certain operating system GNU, as its makers named it;-) ). That's a snazzy new name, compared to Mach, don't you think?;-)
After all, open-source is all about choice and freedom.
Actually, it isn't. Free software is about choice and freedom. Open source is about a development model which builds good software. Open source software happens to be also free software in most cases, but open source software supporters and free software supporters have very different goals. Linus, the big name in open source, doesn't care about freedom at all, or at least so it seems. He doesn't have a problem with requiring closed source tools for efficiently hacking on his kernel, anyway. For RMS, the big name in free software, that would be completely unacceptable.
Ok, I know they were talking about "Linux", but you must have noticed that they were really talking about the whole system. That's what RMS likes to call GNU/Linux, and includes such marvellous programs as X and Mozilla Firefox (which are both neither GNU nor Linux).
The reason this is important in this discussion is that the Linux-model is actually very much like a cathedral: If Linus doesn't like it, it's not going to happen. Linus must do something really wrong before people switch to forks (actually he is appearantly doing some security things quite wrong, and not so many people switch from his tree anyway).
The rest of the OS though is indeed very bazaar-like, as you can see for example from the gcc/egcs fork (and remerge) where many people did indeed choose to use the fork instead of the original. Also the fact that some programs completely die out while others (with the same function) can grow sounds very much evolution-like to me. But the kernel isn't one of those projects at all.
The changes we're seeing now in America are bad, destructive and counter to the ideals upon which the nation was founded.
You americans are always claiming that the ideals upon which the nation was founded are completely holy, and now in a story about the changing of society, you seem to be surprised that the things they considered good at that time are no longer holy for the current president.
It doesn't contradict your story at all, of course. What just surprises me is this Good and Bad thinking, where you seem to consider those as objective measures. I'm quite convinced that Bush is doing what he thinks is right, however I personally think he's doing a very bad job. That doesn't simply make it objectively Bad, though.
I don't understand why you are posting as AC... If you're just reading anyway, you can't be too concerned about your karma? And I have a hard time seeing that post being modded down (except as off topic, but that's usually given to posts which have nothing to do with the thread, not the article, and yours is quite on topic for the thread).
So you're saying that if we just don't accept that GNU/Linux is ready for the desktop, Microsoft will stay off clustering? Great, I just changed my mind and no longer think GNU/Linux is ready for the desktop then.:-) But feel free to use it anyway.;-)
Hahahaha! Good one. You do realise that words are nothing more than their definition? If you have a different definition from the rest of the world, it would be good to start using other people's definition, to prevent communication problems. Which means you don't believe in "God", but you do believe in something else (which I shall leave undefined, as it is irrelevant for this discussion).
Of course I know very well that there are no two people with the same definition of "God", but yours seems to be so far off the average that it would be wise to use a different word.
Your parent never said he didn't influence religious people, he only said that your claim that "My belief in God doesn't effect you in the least" was nonsense. And I think he made some pretty good points supporting it.
Of course, claiming that religious people are sick, and religion is a virus, does indeed imply that atheists are superior to others. Additionally claiming that this sickness is not curable means that there's nothing you can do about that. It doesn't surprise me at all that people are not going to believe that about themselves. However, it does seem similar to smoking to me, where people think they do it because they like it, but all doctors agree that it is in fact an illness (called addiction). The problem with such things is that you can no longer trust your own thinking. Realising what that means will likely make you insane, though.
However Microsoft would need to specifically enumerate which patents [...] which would effectivly publish what they wish to keep secret.
Isn't the whole idea of patents that the invention will not be kept secret? How can they expect to patent an invention and keep it secret anyway? A patent application must include details about how to build whatever was invented. That is why software patents, if they would be allowed, would require publishing of the source code (which makes it pretty much patenting a mathematical formula, and I think everybody agreed that that shouldn't be possible).
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. As far as I understand patents, they can never be used to block publication, as publication is exactly what you need to sacrifice for getting a patent. In return you get a limited time monopoly. Claiming that you want to keep your patents secret is just silly. In that case you shouldn't have applied for a patent in the first place.
And, actually, it doesn't allow changing AT ALL, not just a restriction on the name, "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."
I think they cannot legally forbid using the ideas (and thus copying portions of the document) for a new license, as long as they aren't presented as being part of the GNU GPL, in the sense that the license would be "partially GNU GPL" or something. I'm not sure about this, but it sounds unlikely to me that it would be possible to prevent certain licenses that way.
While it may seem strange at first, it is a very good idea. You can change the GPL all you like, but you can't call it "the GNU GPL" anymore (which means you have to change the title if you change anything). That is a Good Thing, as it means that we all don't have to read the license if it has that name. After all, we already read it and know it's good.:-)
Once you pick a solution the cost of changing outweighs any likely benefits.
This is true for software such as MS Word, which locks the user in. However, for software which uses open standards (which the parliament decided are a Good Thing), changing shouldn't cost a lot. For most popular desktop programs, there are at least several options with the same "look and feel", so training should not be a problem. In the case of non-desktop programs, the (few) people using them are probably the ones who suggested the change, so you can assume them to be already trained.
I'm assuming here that installing the program everywhere means putting it on a network drive, although it wouldn't surprise me if they need to do it locally on every machine (manually). In that case, they should do something about their setup anyway.;-)
I just remembered that I forgot to say what I wanted, so I'll just post again:-)
That party, and especially our prime minister (Balkenende) seems to think that the US is the only important country in the world (just like Bush). For that reason, he'll do anything to make the US happy, because it will mean that we have stronger ties with them. With the war in Iraq, for example, we didn't send any troops, because there wouldn't have been enough support, even in the parliament. But just saying that "we're behind you", and calling that "political support" was possible without causing too much trouble (not because people liked it, but because they couldn't be bothered). Because that would make friends with the US, that's what they did. Personally, I think we need the rest of Europe much more. Our economy is directly linked to that of Germany, not that of the US. But well, they've been saying so many totally stupid things that I don't think they could be convinced of anything...
For some reason they even seem to think that it's a good idea to send the military on peace missions which are led by NATO, not the UN. And I thought even stupid people would understand some things...
We have a very large christian party here in the Netherlands, which we consider conservative (Not that they come close to even the democrats in the US though). Many people traditionally vote for them, so they have pretty much ruled the country the last century. However, lately the leaders of the party are much more conservative than the people behind it (and thus also than the country). There have been enormous demonstrations against the war in Iraq, but also against things they do here, such as raising taxes and lowering welfare.
I get the feeling that many people are against the government, but somehow they vote for them again anyway. In the last campain, they advertised with being "reliable". If there's one party that isn't reliable, it's them. But the people don't seem to notice...:-(
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So you're saying all the European governments aren't "in line"?
If you have so little trust in your government that you want a gun against them, you should leave the country at once and live with people you do trust... Remember, the government isn't just some strange people ruling the country. The government is the people's (mostly indirect, but still) representation, in case of a democracy at least. If the US should be considered a democracy is left as an exercise for the reader.
You're advising people to buy guns?? I thought it was bad enough that so many people in the US bought guns without being told to. Pushing people to buy guns is a good way to increase deadly accidents. The only valid reason to me for buying a gun would be for protection, but that one is only valid in the wild west, which as far as I know doesn't exist anymore.
Then again, I'm happily living in Europe, where we have lots of political problems, but at least people aren't allowed to carry guns. This is one of the reasons that I don't intend to ever visit the US.
So why would my representative here in the Netherlands care about what Americans tells her? And what would it help if she sponsors some American legislation?
In fact, the system should be called GNU even if the FSF didn't write a single line of code.
If I put something together out of blocks, none of which I made, I still get to choose the name for my creation. Then if someone exchanges one block for something he made himself, that doesn't change the name of the creation (unless it was significantly changing it, so the original is not recognisable).
This is very much what happened. The FSF put a system together and gave it a name. They even wrote a substatial amount of code to get the system working, but that doesn't really matter. Linus wrote a kernel and plugged it in (with quite some help from the FSF, btw, as it is not a trivial thing to do).
For historical reasons people call the whole system Linux, not GNU. RMS is quite right to say "I made the system, I get to choose the name". The name is GNU. Only for PR reasons or clarity could you consider calling it GNU/Linux, or "a Linux-based GNU system".
No, it was indeed something that was never done before, and it still isn't done anywhere else, as far as I know. What we're doing is not just using a microkernel as the basis of the OS, but making the OS consist of a collection of mutually untrusting servers.
All other microkernel approaches have a load of servers (or even just one) which all run as "root" and just trust each other. Of course there is some trust by the Hurd servers, but not more than needed.
This is supposed to enhance security and stability, although only The Real World(tm) can show if that is significant, or even true at all.
I can't help but wonder if all you guys really don't understand what RMS means, or just pretend. I'll try to explain it anyway.
GNU is an operating system. Hurd is the kernel of the GNU operating system. Because this kernel is part of the GNU project, it is called GNU Hurd, similar to "Microsoft Windows".
Linux is also a kernel. It can be used with the GNU operating system instead of its native kernel. The result is still a GNU operating system, but some people prefer to mention "Linux" in it for several reasons. In that case it should be called "GNU/Linux", as "a combination of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel", but definitely not "GNU Linux", which would mean "Linux, made by/as part of GNU".
"GNU/Emacs" means the GNU operating system, combined with Emacs. That doesn't make much sense, as Emacs is part of the GNU operating system. It should be called "Emacs" or "GNU Emacs", if you want to state explicitly that it is part of the GNU project.
An exception is "GNU/Hurd". This is just GNU, which runs its native kernel, GNU Hurd. The reason that this phrasing can be useful is because "GNU/Linux" can also be called "GNU". To differentiate between "GNU/Linux" and "GNU/Hurd", it makes sense to write them thusly.
That wasn't so hard, now was it? If I see any of you making that mistake again, I'll subtract 10 points from your score. Now get back to work.
Am I misunderstanding you, or do you propose to update these values (one record per page, quite a lot I would say) on every context switch?
I also fail to see why microkernels would be helped by this, as I think L4 allows all the things you want (in a technically different way, but who cares).
No, this will not be possible. Executables must be linked with the exact libraries they use. Libc is very much dependant on the underlying system, which is quite different for Hurd and Linux (or even for Hurd on Mach and Hurd on L4).
So all programs must be recompiled, which means you will need two systems.
In fact, L4 does even less. Memory management is mostly done in user space (of course there are some kernel tables which hold information about allocation though), interrupts aren't "serviced" by the kernel, other than sending a message to a user space handler. Interfacing the hardware is also done from user space. The only real thing L4 does is inter process communication (IPC) and thread creation/destruction.
Yes. The Hurd-on-L4 bases all its communication on a capability system. Programs running on it may or may not explicitly make use of it (it's all wrapped for the POSIX interface, so they obviously don't see it), but they will use it underneath anyway.
A good thing about this is of course that things like chroot are very easily implemented (there are many more good things, as I'm sure you know), but there is one problem: Any program which uses it is not portable to other systems. That means most programs will not want to use it. Which is a pity, of course, as it is a great system.
It's not an L4-based kernel. L4 is the kernel, the rest, while part of the OS, is not. Most of the rest will simply reuse the code from the Hurd on Mach, so it really isn't a different project. It only has a different structure underneath (which isn't visible to anyone but system programmers, except for performance and security).
It's not the kernel which will solve them, but we hope they are indeed solved by the project.
How about calling the kernel L4, as their makers named it? (Just like we all call a certain operating system GNU, as its makers named it ;-) ). That's a snazzy new name, compared to Mach, don't you think? ;-)
Actually, it isn't. Free software is about choice and freedom. Open source is about a development model which builds good software. Open source software happens to be also free software in most cases, but open source software supporters and free software supporters have very different goals. Linus, the big name in open source, doesn't care about freedom at all, or at least so it seems. He doesn't have a problem with requiring closed source tools for efficiently hacking on his kernel, anyway. For RMS, the big name in free software, that would be completely unacceptable.
Ok, I know they were talking about "Linux", but you must have noticed that they were really talking about the whole system. That's what RMS likes to call GNU/Linux, and includes such marvellous programs as X and Mozilla Firefox (which are both neither GNU nor Linux).
The reason this is important in this discussion is that the Linux-model is actually very much like a cathedral: If Linus doesn't like it, it's not going to happen. Linus must do something really wrong before people switch to forks (actually he is appearantly doing some security things quite wrong, and not so many people switch from his tree anyway).
The rest of the OS though is indeed very bazaar-like, as you can see for example from the gcc/egcs fork (and remerge) where many people did indeed choose to use the fork instead of the original. Also the fact that some programs completely die out while others (with the same function) can grow sounds very much evolution-like to me. But the kernel isn't one of those projects at all.
That may be true, but are you going to sue MS? As far as I know, most of the people and companies who tried bankrupted as a result.
You americans are always claiming that the ideals upon which the nation was founded are completely holy, and now in a story about the changing of society, you seem to be surprised that the things they considered good at that time are no longer holy for the current president.
It doesn't contradict your story at all, of course. What just surprises me is this Good and Bad thinking, where you seem to consider those as objective measures. I'm quite convinced that Bush is doing what he thinks is right, however I personally think he's doing a very bad job. That doesn't simply make it objectively Bad, though.
I don't understand why you are posting as AC... If you're just reading anyway, you can't be too concerned about your karma? And I have a hard time seeing that post being modded down (except as off topic, but that's usually given to posts which have nothing to do with the thread, not the article, and yours is quite on topic for the thread).
So you're saying that if we just don't accept that GNU/Linux is ready for the desktop, Microsoft will stay off clustering? Great, I just changed my mind and no longer think GNU/Linux is ready for the desktop then. :-) But feel free to use it anyway. ;-)
Hahahaha! Good one. You do realise that words are nothing more than their definition? If you have a different definition from the rest of the world, it would be good to start using other people's definition, to prevent communication problems. Which means you don't believe in "God", but you do believe in something else (which I shall leave undefined, as it is irrelevant for this discussion).
Of course I know very well that there are no two people with the same definition of "God", but yours seems to be so far off the average that it would be wise to use a different word.
Your parent never said he didn't influence religious people, he only said that your claim that "My belief in God doesn't effect you in the least" was nonsense. And I think he made some pretty good points supporting it.
Of course, claiming that religious people are sick, and religion is a virus, does indeed imply that atheists are superior to others. Additionally claiming that this sickness is not curable means that there's nothing you can do about that. It doesn't surprise me at all that people are not going to believe that about themselves. However, it does seem similar to smoking to me, where people think they do it because they like it, but all doctors agree that it is in fact an illness (called addiction). The problem with such things is that you can no longer trust your own thinking. Realising what that means will likely make you insane, though.
Isn't the whole idea of patents that the invention will not be kept secret? How can they expect to patent an invention and keep it secret anyway? A patent application must include details about how to build whatever was invented. That is why software patents, if they would be allowed, would require publishing of the source code (which makes it pretty much patenting a mathematical formula, and I think everybody agreed that that shouldn't be possible).
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. As far as I understand patents, they can never be used to block publication, as publication is exactly what you need to sacrifice for getting a patent. In return you get a limited time monopoly. Claiming that you want to keep your patents secret is just silly. In that case you shouldn't have applied for a patent in the first place.
I think they cannot legally forbid using the ideas (and thus copying portions of the document) for a new license, as long as they aren't presented as being part of the GNU GPL, in the sense that the license would be "partially GNU GPL" or something. I'm not sure about this, but it sounds unlikely to me that it would be possible to prevent certain licenses that way.
While it may seem strange at first, it is a very good idea. You can change the GPL all you like, but you can't call it "the GNU GPL" anymore (which means you have to change the title if you change anything). That is a Good Thing, as it means that we all don't have to read the license if it has that name. After all, we already read it and know it's good. :-)
This is true for software such as MS Word, which locks the user in. However, for software which uses open standards (which the parliament decided are a Good Thing), changing shouldn't cost a lot. For most popular desktop programs, there are at least several options with the same "look and feel", so training should not be a problem. In the case of non-desktop programs, the (few) people using them are probably the ones who suggested the change, so you can assume them to be already trained.
I'm assuming here that installing the program everywhere means putting it on a network drive, although it wouldn't surprise me if they need to do it locally on every machine (manually). In that case, they should do something about their setup anyway. ;-)
I just remembered that I forgot to say what I wanted, so I'll just post again :-)
That party, and especially our prime minister (Balkenende) seems to think that the US is the only important country in the world (just like Bush). For that reason, he'll do anything to make the US happy, because it will mean that we have stronger ties with them. With the war in Iraq, for example, we didn't send any troops, because there wouldn't have been enough support, even in the parliament. But just saying that "we're behind you", and calling that "political support" was possible without causing too much trouble (not because people liked it, but because they couldn't be bothered). Because that would make friends with the US, that's what they did. Personally, I think we need the rest of Europe much more. Our economy is directly linked to that of Germany, not that of the US. But well, they've been saying so many totally stupid things that I don't think they could be convinced of anything...
For some reason they even seem to think that it's a good idea to send the military on peace missions which are led by NATO, not the UN. And I thought even stupid people would understand some things...
We have a very large christian party here in the Netherlands, which we consider conservative (Not that they come close to even the democrats in the US though). Many people traditionally vote for them, so they have pretty much ruled the country the last century. However, lately the leaders of the party are much more conservative than the people behind it (and thus also than the country). There have been enormous demonstrations against the war in Iraq, but also against things they do here, such as raising taxes and lowering welfare.
I get the feeling that many people are against the government, but somehow they vote for them again anyway. In the last campain, they advertised with being "reliable". If there's one party that isn't reliable, it's them. But the people don't seem to notice... :-(