Let us all know how it goes. I've never heard of Lindows spamming anybody, and I know they don't sell their database. You might get subscribed to their newsletter, but that's easy to disable.
Since the only MS software I purchased for use in California was pre-installed on my laptop which I bought for a few week-long business trips there, and was purchased outside the settlement time period, I can't fill it out myself and find out.
LindowsOS is not crippled in any way. It contains under the hood a fully functional Debian system, with a fully functional apt-get. Click-N-Run is just an interface for commercial software distribution and a much easier way for inexperienced users to install software. If you want, you can use apt-get to install all of your software in LindowsOS without a problem.
I've read the patch on SecurityFocus. It's very simple. It looks like there is a buffer that at some point needs to be reallocated to fit more data. However, if that reallocation would put the buffer over 32KB, then the reallocation is not performed. The bug was that the recorded size of the buffer would be increased, even if the allocation was not performed, but not reset back to the original size. The patch only increases the recorded buffer size if the buffer really is grown.
An exploit of this hole would have to find a way to trigger this buffer allocation, and get it to overflow 32KB. Since the allocation would not take place, but the recorded buffer size is still large, there would be an unallocated memory area that could be referenced by code that uses that buffer. One would need to use that to overwrite program code with exploit code.
Uh... you drive a METRO that way? I have a Metro. I would never drive anything less than completely safe if near a cliff or a steep hill. Around here where it's mostly flat though, for a tin can coffin that gets 45MPG it's not too bad of a drive. Obviously I like my Honda Civic better, but that's an automatic and has poorer fuel efficiency. I can drive about 20 miles to get to some nice mountain roads though, if I want the winding curves and death cliffs...
I rode in a friend's Vette once. 1st at the rev limiter was 45MPH (it was funny to be suddenly going 42MPH in first gear, after what seemed like half a second). Is second gear really half the ratio?
Honestly... I think people are just feeling buyer's remorse after purchasing a car for a bit more than most upper middle class Americans will pay for a house (Ferarri $250k, upper middle class house $220k (where I live)). So, they become defensive, and their ego swells to compensate for the gaping hole in their heart. Nobody should ever pay more than $60000 for an automobile.
I've a friend who drives a 2001 BMW. At one point driving on very straight, very recently paved roads in the desert, we reached speeds of 120MPH. Going the other direction on the same road, when I wasn't riding with him, he reched 135MPH, the point where the engine stops accelerating because of the onboard computer. There were no other cars within miles. If any other cars were visible in any direction, he immediately slowed down. I think that's about as close to the track as you can get without actually being there.
I'm going to laugh when somebody burns out the power supply on their motherboard (yes, on the motherboard) because the lights on their RAM used too much power.
I once had that happen on accident. I bought an old used computer with a Trident video card that also had an onboard IDE, floppy, serial, parallel I/O controller (what the crap?). I could never get it to do anything graphical, and the motherboard BIOS was reporting 704KB of memory. Only after reading this thread do I realize that's what was happening. Crazy video card...
If you go to mysearchnow.com (don't go there), there's a toolbar that can be installed, and somehow they tricked my parents or one of their younger children into installing it, so now IE has an affiliate-stealing random popup-displaying toolbar always enabled. The toolbar's name in the context menu is always a different random string of letters, so I can't just find it in the registry and delete the file off the hard drive. Ad-Aware did not get rid of it.
Does anybody know how to get rid of the MySearchNow.com toolbar? My parents won't let me reinstall Windows on their computer.
I don't see how the two statements are contradictory. All artists are rewarded with a flat fee for the creation of their work, but the good artists are rewarded with extra money for their popularity and originality. So, you can still work harder to become a better artist and get more money. Or, you can work with the old system of distribution.
Artists can not gain an adtanage with a new song by using money from the old song to buy more advertising. Only the fans' appreciation of that artist will benefit the new song.
Postfix was easy enough for me to set up for myself under Mandrake. I'm going to be moving my server over to Gentoo sooner or later. I didn't manage to get pop-before-smtp working though, mostly because I didn't try too hard. I'm content to ssh into my server for e-mail access when I'm on the road. As for IMAP I've never done it so I can't say. I personally use mbox for my mailbox format on the server, and Maildir with my e-mail client (Kmail). Maildir's probably best for a setup with folders.
There are frequently updates to a particular version, which can be patches, build improvements, etc. Before anything is marked stable it gets tested by at least a few people (certainly not as rigorously as the ancient Debian stable, but sufficient for most people). There will frequently be something like a (random theoretical example) 1.5.2 version of something marked with the ~arch keyword (~x86, ~ppc, etc mean unstable), and a 1.4.7 version that as -r1, -r2, -r3, -r4, -r5, and so on, all apparently either better patches or improvements to the build.
At any rate, even if you have to install SRPMS from other vendors to get backported security fixes, it's really easy to get going. Writing your own ebuilds is easier than making your own SRPMS. For simple packages you can basically just copy an existing ebuild to a new file, rename it with the name and version of your package, and edit the home page variable within the ebuild.
Gentoo might not work out for you, but it is most definitely worth looking at. With binary packages also now available, it's possible to avoid the long compile times for most of the software, and only compile stuff you need to tweak.
What we need instead of labels and an RIAA is an alternative method of funding and distributing music, completely free of any restrictions of the old system.
We could even make it fair for everyone, by the government giving all artists a small amount of money to start out in exchange for producing a certain number of works. Government patronage brought us many of the classics that have endured centuries. Maybe we can have a musical Renaissance with this.
Don't immediately dismiss this as socialism either. Musicians still have to compete for downloads by making better music than everyone else; this system will just give everyone an equal footing to begin with. One problem I find in capitalism is that old money families have lots of power, while new generations are "punished" because a family in a previous generation was wealthier than theirs. This is fair captialism. Rewards are based only on the quality of the work, and not on the quality of previous work or previous money.
Music is rated by its creators based on absolute criteria established at the creation of the distribution system. For example, when you go to a movie, if it's rated PG, you know there won't be any bare breasts or F-bombs, and the profanity will be limited. PG-13, there won't be any full nudity (and still usually no nudity), and less violence and sexual content than an R-rated movie. G-rated movies need no explanation.
A similar system could be established for this government subsidized distributor. For example, if a song has a certain level or type of profanity, or references a certain level of violence or sexual conduct, it receives a well-defined rating based on that level. These ratings would be double-checked by the people entering the music into the database, and could also be contested by popular vote.
How do you determine popularity? By what's played on the radio? What if musician A has more money than B and pays Radio Station Y to play his song twice a day instead of once a day?
How do you regulate what get's played? Stuff played at 1am has less of a chance of being heard than stuff at 12 noon.
Popularity is also determined by popular vote (by the number of times a song is downloaded). This system I propose is an exclusive system; you cannot commercially distribute your music if you also distribute it in this system, and vice versa. The only external distribution allowed would be free-of-cost or at-cost distribution, to prevent unfair biasing.
This will require the creation of entirely new content to fill this system; all the old-world music will still be under traditional commercial distribution.
So basicaly you're describing radio, except now instead of being able to change the station when the commercials come on, I'm going to have to watch blinking ans ever increasingly annoying ads just to listen to my music?
No, there will be no radio. Songs and/or albums in this system are only heard by the request of the user. By "banners" I didn't mean user-created banners. All banners would be mostly the same; they could include the band logo, the band's genre, and a brief description of the music. When a user is searching a particular genre for something they want to hear, within (or beside) those ranked search results will also be random results from that genre that might be similar to their query, but might not receive the highest ranking for whatever reason.
Limiting free speech much?
This is no better or worse than limiting picketers to a "free speech zone" during the Olympics every time they come to the US. Everyone would be free to comment on the music, but explicit promotion would be restricted to the system to ensure that everyone has a fair chance starting out. The good music will become more popular, and word-of-mouth advertising (and popularity rankings of the system) will still allow the good music to gain more success than the bad music.
so it's not quite like radio, instead I have to subscribe and I have to pay more just because I appreciate music more? And why should it cost more to me? If the artists are getting paid the same anyways, it doesn't matter if I download 1 or a thousand songs, they're all getting paid so there is no loss to them if I download more.
No, it's nothing like radio, because the listener determines all the playlists, and those playlists can be any length. You have to subscribe because taxing those who don't listen to music would be unfair (remember this is a system for government support of the useful arts). The subscription price would serve the same purpose as a tax: covering the costs of the service. There is a loss to the government if you download more music, as creators (not distributors -- there will be no other distributors in this system) are given extra money when their songs are downloaded more than other songs (this serves as a measure of quality; the best music
Source files contain functions. Header files contain declarations of those functions.
If the declaration is present for a function, it's called an explicit declaration.
If the declaration is missing, it's called an implicit declaration.
Implicit declaration is dangerous, because if the function is misused in the original implicit declaration, the implicit declaration will not match the actual function, which could cause memory errors.
So, you should always remember to include the appropriate headers to prevent implicit declaration.
Overall this seems like a good response, but to improve it, I would probably drop the name calling and profanity before letting the mainstream press get hold of it.
Also, if you send this letter to some press organization, include reference URL's (especially to Perens's comments on the SCOForum presentation) so they can verify the facts stated.
How about a small amount of money is given out indiscriminantly to all PG13-rated or less music, with additional funds based on popularity of the music over time? That way all groups get an equal chance at the start. People can then pay an optional access toll, like driving on toll roads, to obtain an account with the music distribution system.
As for promotion of music, as part of the free music deal you have to agree to see random banners displayed for all music groups, with no distributor-specified weighting. The user should be able to limit the banners seen to only their favorite genres, or music with their preferred level of profanity. That way all groups get an equal chance at promotion. The promotion of music outside of the distribution system should be extremely limited and regulated to prevent creation of a bias against those with less of a marketing budget who still might have good talent.
Users who download an inordinate amount of music could be required to obtain a higher-use access account, for maybe something like 2x the price, or could pay on a per-song basis.
I think this sounds like an ideal system of artistic distribution. One only has to work out the optimum access fees and popularity payments, and figure out how to prevent "bombing" the system to artificially inflate popularity, and any other bugs that might come up.
It's indeed a shame that SkyOS is closed source. This is the kind of project that would have hundreds of developers within weeks of it being GPL'd. I doubt that just one individual, working part time for six years (since 1997), could support USB and write a complete kernel and GUI without using the source code of others. The EULA posted in another comment seems to be an indirect admission that the kernel even includes Linux source code. We need someone to do a binary analysis of SkyOS to determine if any Linux kernel code has been borrowed illegally.
Since the CD is only $10, I would've bought it too, if I could read the kernel code and modify it under the GPL. I doubt it would be possible to get a wrapper for binary only drivers working without running the entire kernel, as these frequently use non-recommended access points into the kernel (modifying the system call table or something like that), but open source drivers could easily be ported, and a basic compatibility layer created to make it easier for nVidia and ATI to port their drivers.
Honestly, I don't think that an operating system has any business being closed source. It just makes much more sense for the core of a system to be open. I'm not opposed to using commercial applications on a free OS, but I want to be able to see and modify the core of my system (and yes, I do read and modify; I write my own drivers too). Operating systems are just better when they're open.
I will not use SkyOS until the possibility of GPL code copying is cleared up. Another benefit of OSS: infringements are easily identified and repaired once the complaining party reveals proof of the infringing code.
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Let us all know how it goes. I've never heard of Lindows spamming anybody, and I know they don't sell their database. You might get subscribed to their newsletter, but that's easy to disable.
Since the only MS software I purchased for use in California was pre-installed on my laptop which I bought for a few week-long business trips there, and was purchased outside the settlement time period, I can't fill it out myself and find out.
LindowsOS is not crippled in any way. It contains under the hood a fully functional Debian system, with a fully functional apt-get. Click-N-Run is just an interface for commercial software distribution and a much easier way for inexperienced users to install software. If you want, you can use apt-get to install all of your software in LindowsOS without a problem.
I've read the patch on SecurityFocus. It's very simple. It looks like there is a buffer that at some point needs to be reallocated to fit more data. However, if that reallocation would put the buffer over 32KB, then the reallocation is not performed. The bug was that the recorded size of the buffer would be increased, even if the allocation was not performed, but not reset back to the original size. The patch only increases the recorded buffer size if the buffer really is grown.
An exploit of this hole would have to find a way to trigger this buffer allocation, and get it to overflow 32KB. Since the allocation would not take place, but the recorded buffer size is still large, there would be an unallocated memory area that could be referenced by code that uses that buffer. One would need to use that to overwrite program code with exploit code.
Uh... you drive a METRO that way? I have a Metro. I would never drive anything less than completely safe if near a cliff or a steep hill. Around here where it's mostly flat though, for a tin can coffin that gets 45MPG it's not too bad of a drive. Obviously I like my Honda Civic better, but that's an automatic and has poorer fuel efficiency. I can drive about 20 miles to get to some nice mountain roads though, if I want the winding curves and death cliffs...
I rode in a friend's Vette once. 1st at the rev limiter was 45MPH (it was funny to be suddenly going 42MPH in first gear, after what seemed like half a second). Is second gear really half the ratio?
Honestly... I think people are just feeling buyer's remorse after purchasing a car for a bit more than most upper middle class Americans will pay for a house (Ferarri $250k, upper middle class house $220k (where I live)). So, they become defensive, and their ego swells to compensate for the gaping hole in their heart. Nobody should ever pay more than $60000 for an automobile.
Respond with words, not points.
I've a friend who drives a 2001 BMW. At one point driving on very straight, very recently paved roads in the desert, we reached speeds of 120MPH. Going the other direction on the same road, when I wasn't riding with him, he reched 135MPH, the point where the engine stops accelerating because of the onboard computer. There were no other cars within miles. If any other cars were visible in any direction, he immediately slowed down. I think that's about as close to the track as you can get without actually being there.
I'm going to laugh when somebody burns out the power supply on their motherboard (yes, on the motherboard) because the lights on their RAM used too much power.
I once had that happen on accident. I bought an old used computer with a Trident video card that also had an onboard IDE, floppy, serial, parallel I/O controller (what the crap?). I could never get it to do anything graphical, and the motherboard BIOS was reporting 704KB of memory. Only after reading this thread do I realize that's what was happening. Crazy video card...
You could use the LED's to identify which physical chips are bad while memtest86 is hitting those chips.
Someone applied a custom texture from Propaganda to the inside of his G3 cube a while back. It looked pretty sweet.
So, even if they have a patent, there's prior art. Heck, even sleeved DVD and VHS cases could be considered prior art.
They might have a patent on a unique way of locking down a plastic cover though. And I have seen patent numbers inside of DVD cases...
If you go to mysearchnow.com (don't go there), there's a toolbar that can be installed, and somehow they tricked my parents or one of their younger children into installing it, so now IE has an affiliate-stealing random popup-displaying toolbar always enabled. The toolbar's name in the context menu is always a different random string of letters, so I can't just find it in the registry and delete the file off the hard drive. Ad-Aware did not get rid of it.
Does anybody know how to get rid of the MySearchNow.com toolbar? My parents won't let me reinstall Windows on their computer.
Straw man: we're not talking about the mafia. We're talking about programming.
I don't see how the two statements are contradictory. All artists are rewarded with a flat fee for the creation of their work, but the good artists are rewarded with extra money for their popularity and originality. So, you can still work harder to become a better artist and get more money. Or, you can work with the old system of distribution.
Artists can not gain an adtanage with a new song by using money from the old song to buy more advertising. Only the fans' appreciation of that artist will benefit the new song.
Maybe it's just direct deposited to his checking account, at which point he immediately transfers it to other accounts with better interest rates.
Remind me not to hire anybody from Chicago...
I hope for the world's sake you're joking. If you're not joking, I hope for your sake you don't get hired by anyone making critical systems.
Postfix was easy enough for me to set up for myself under Mandrake. I'm going to be moving my server over to Gentoo sooner or later. I didn't manage to get pop-before-smtp working though, mostly because I didn't try too hard. I'm content to ssh into my server for e-mail access when I'm on the road. As for IMAP I've never done it so I can't say. I personally use mbox for my mailbox format on the server, and Maildir with my e-mail client (Kmail). Maildir's probably best for a setup with folders.
There are frequently updates to a particular version, which can be patches, build improvements, etc. Before anything is marked stable it gets tested by at least a few people (certainly not as rigorously as the ancient Debian stable, but sufficient for most people). There will frequently be something like a (random theoretical example) 1.5.2 version of something marked with the ~arch keyword (~x86, ~ppc, etc mean unstable), and a 1.4.7 version that as -r1, -r2, -r3, -r4, -r5, and so on, all apparently either better patches or improvements to the build.
At any rate, even if you have to install SRPMS from other vendors to get backported security fixes, it's really easy to get going. Writing your own ebuilds is easier than making your own SRPMS. For simple packages you can basically just copy an existing ebuild to a new file, rename it with the name and version of your package, and edit the home page variable within the ebuild.
Gentoo might not work out for you, but it is most definitely worth looking at. With binary packages also now available, it's possible to avoid the long compile times for most of the software, and only compile stuff you need to tweak.
What we need instead of labels and an RIAA is an alternative method of funding and distributing music, completely free of any restrictions of the old system.
/. journal.
We could even make it fair for everyone, by the government giving all artists a small amount of money to start out in exchange for producing a certain number of works. Government patronage brought us many of the classics that have endured centuries. Maybe we can have a musical Renaissance with this.
Read my full idea in my
Don't immediately dismiss this as socialism either. Musicians still have to compete for downloads by making better music than everyone else; this system will just give everyone an equal footing to begin with. One problem I find in capitalism is that old money families have lots of power, while new generations are "punished" because a family in a previous generation was wealthier than theirs. This is fair captialism. Rewards are based only on the quality of the work, and not on the quality of previous work or previous money.
Who rates the music?
Music is rated by its creators based on absolute criteria established at the creation of the distribution system. For example, when you go to a movie, if it's rated PG, you know there won't be any bare breasts or F-bombs, and the profanity will be limited. PG-13, there won't be any full nudity (and still usually no nudity), and less violence and sexual content than an R-rated movie. G-rated movies need no explanation.
A similar system could be established for this government subsidized distributor. For example, if a song has a certain level or type of profanity, or references a certain level of violence or sexual conduct, it receives a well-defined rating based on that level. These ratings would be double-checked by the people entering the music into the database, and could also be contested by popular vote.
How do you determine popularity? By what's played on the radio? What if musician A has more money than B and pays Radio Station Y to play his song twice a day instead of once a day?
How do you regulate what get's played? Stuff played at 1am has less of a chance of being heard than stuff at 12 noon.
Popularity is also determined by popular vote (by the number of times a song is downloaded). This system I propose is an exclusive system; you cannot commercially distribute your music if you also distribute it in this system, and vice versa. The only external distribution allowed would be free-of-cost or at-cost distribution, to prevent unfair biasing.
This will require the creation of entirely new content to fill this system; all the old-world music will still be under traditional commercial distribution.
So basicaly you're describing radio, except now instead of being able to change the station when the commercials come on, I'm going to have to watch blinking ans ever increasingly annoying ads just to listen to my music?
No, there will be no radio. Songs and/or albums in this system are only heard by the request of the user. By "banners" I didn't mean user-created banners. All banners would be mostly the same; they could include the band logo, the band's genre, and a brief description of the music. When a user is searching a particular genre for something they want to hear, within (or beside) those ranked search results will also be random results from that genre that might be similar to their query, but might not receive the highest ranking for whatever reason.
Limiting free speech much?
This is no better or worse than limiting picketers to a "free speech zone" during the Olympics every time they come to the US. Everyone would be free to comment on the music, but explicit promotion would be restricted to the system to ensure that everyone has a fair chance starting out. The good music will become more popular, and word-of-mouth advertising (and popularity rankings of the system) will still allow the good music to gain more success than the bad music.
so it's not quite like radio, instead I have to subscribe and I have to pay more just because I appreciate music more? And why should it cost more to me? If the artists are getting paid the same anyways, it doesn't matter if I download 1 or a thousand songs, they're all getting paid so there is no loss to them if I download more.
No, it's nothing like radio, because the listener determines all the playlists, and those playlists can be any length. You have to subscribe because taxing those who don't listen to music would be unfair (remember this is a system for government support of the useful arts). The subscription price would serve the same purpose as a tax: covering the costs of the service. There is a loss to the government if you download more music, as creators (not distributors -- there will be no other distributors in this system) are given extra money when their songs are downloaded more than other songs (this serves as a measure of quality; the best music
The EU might as well be a country, since its purpose making laws that affect all the members....
BTW: if you're European (which I'm not), don't let software patents screw you over the way they have here in the US!
This post deserves at least a +3 funny modifier.
Yeah.
Let me explain it to those who don't know C.
You have source files and header files.
Source files contain functions. Header files contain declarations of those functions.
If the declaration is present for a function, it's called an explicit declaration.
If the declaration is missing, it's called an implicit declaration.
Implicit declaration is dangerous, because if the function is misused in the original implicit declaration, the implicit declaration will not match the actual function, which could cause memory errors.
So, you should always remember to include the appropriate headers to prevent implicit declaration.
Overall this seems like a good response, but to improve it, I would probably drop the name calling and profanity before letting the mainstream press get hold of it.
Also, if you send this letter to some press organization, include reference URL's (especially to Perens's comments on the SCOForum presentation) so they can verify the facts stated.
How about a small amount of money is given out indiscriminantly to all PG13-rated or less music, with additional funds based on popularity of the music over time? That way all groups get an equal chance at the start. People can then pay an optional access toll, like driving on toll roads, to obtain an account with the music distribution system.
As for promotion of music, as part of the free music deal you have to agree to see random banners displayed for all music groups, with no distributor-specified weighting. The user should be able to limit the banners seen to only their favorite genres, or music with their preferred level of profanity. That way all groups get an equal chance at promotion. The promotion of music outside of the distribution system should be extremely limited and regulated to prevent creation of a bias against those with less of a marketing budget who still might have good talent.
Users who download an inordinate amount of music could be required to obtain a higher-use access account, for maybe something like 2x the price, or could pay on a per-song basis.
I think this sounds like an ideal system of artistic distribution. One only has to work out the optimum access fees and popularity payments, and figure out how to prevent "bombing" the system to artificially inflate popularity, and any other bugs that might come up.
It's indeed a shame that SkyOS is closed source. This is the kind of project that would have hundreds of developers within weeks of it being GPL'd. I doubt that just one individual, working part time for six years (since 1997), could support USB and write a complete kernel and GUI without using the source code of others. The EULA posted in another comment seems to be an indirect admission that the kernel even includes Linux source code. We need someone to do a binary analysis of SkyOS to determine if any Linux kernel code has been borrowed illegally.
Since the CD is only $10, I would've bought it too, if I could read the kernel code and modify it under the GPL. I doubt it would be possible to get a wrapper for binary only drivers working without running the entire kernel, as these frequently use non-recommended access points into the kernel (modifying the system call table or something like that), but open source drivers could easily be ported, and a basic compatibility layer created to make it easier for nVidia and ATI to port their drivers.
Honestly, I don't think that an operating system has any business being closed source. It just makes much more sense for the core of a system to be open. I'm not opposed to using commercial applications on a free OS, but I want to be able to see and modify the core of my system (and yes, I do read and modify; I write my own drivers too). Operating systems are just better when they're open.
I will not use SkyOS until the possibility of GPL code copying is cleared up. Another benefit of OSS: infringements are easily identified and repaired once the complaining party reveals proof of the infringing code.