He didn't say that. He said he would expect to be fired. I hope that, in a genuine life-or-death situation, he would consider it worth it to speak out.
OTOH, MS software and national security is probably not a life-or-death issue. At least, I hope it's not.
Re:Creator's rights and copying technologies
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
On the other side of the book piracy debate stands Eric Flint, who's artistic credentials don't nearly match up with Ellison's, but who has collected more hard data regarding the effects of piracy on artists than everyone else put together (books music and movies. He has also taken far more personal risk based on his conclusions than anyone else I can think of.
What microsoft is doing is no different than what Vinge did in True Names searching for Slimy Limey's identity back in the 1970s. Now, if MS actually makes this work, instead of just talking about it, that would be innovative, assuming no one else had done it between now and then.
Innovation doesn't count until it works, which, for microsoft, is usually long after its announced -- if ever.
An object class is not as powerful as templates. Consider: (apologies for syntx errors
class foo{...}
class bar{...}
int f(foo){...}
int f(bar){...}
void x(Object o){
int tmp=f(o);//Illegal, and you can't cast around it!
}
Yess, you could make foo and bar implement some interface, but the complexity costs quickly go through the roof. Yes, you could auto-generate that code (and they said Java was high-level!) but not for library classes. Yes you could wrap those, but this is getting really ugly, with so much code generation you may as well just write in python or something.
Are you sure about this? That would mean there must exist legal C++ code that will never finish compiling. I have a really hard time picturing code like that.
Alternative theory, the future is getting even weirder.
In the past, we thought about improvements in transportation, weapons, manufacturing, and other fields that left us bascally as we were. But the interesting ideas of the near future are in communication and thought -- things that will change *us*. That's a lot harder to imagine.
Yeah, this idea is largely from Vernor Vinge, an excellent science fiction writer who's still writing (but not fast enough!).
If they were trying to make a PR point, it all depends on what the media reports now doesn't it?
Considering that most of the media is RIAA members (or, if not, then MPAA members and closely allied), I'm sure media coverage will be uniformly sympathetic.
The hashes would reveal the code in question, because they could be compared to the Linux hashes (appropriate version) and then the relevant lines read out of the Linux code. Those lines will now be revealed to have passed SCO's elaborate QA procedures [trying to keep straight face] and this valuable trade secret will be breached. After all, no one would want to use grubby hobbyist-written code [keeping straight face is getting harder] but if they knew it was good enough for SCO, they'd all jump on it, and SCO's unique virtues would be spread to all their competetors!
It makes as much sense as anything SCO's said.
Hey, I just realized -- I'm typing this. I don't have to keep a straight face!
I think what they're worried about is large-scale lending.
Think about it this way. Most people own a lot of music that they're not listening to right now. Imagine if they lent it out to people who wanted it, with the ability to claim it back if they decided to listen to it. People could buy a lot less music, and still listen to just as much.
Now scale this to the internet and automate all the searching, and hardly anyone will buy music again (some people will have to for each new album, and real fans will want a reliable copy, but that's it).
Totally legal, maybe a good idea, really sucks for the artists (or at least the record labels). I wonder if we'll see it soon.
I don't think the question can really be answered in terms of how much a person "deserves". What can be answered is how much is fair or how much is most effective. Remember, the purpose of copyright etc. is to "promote the useful arts", no more no less. The appropriate amount of copyright is that which balances rewarding creators with permitting derivitives and creates the most total art/technology. I suspect a copyright of 15 years for literature, 20 for nonfiction, 10 for music and 5 for software (irrespective of author's health or nature) would be about right, though I can hardly prove it.
But this uestion shouldn't be decided by slashdoters picking numbers out of the ether any more than by vested interests bidding on it. It should be decided by historical study, detailed simulation, or (if nessesary) experiment. I wish someone were trying.
This is great news for the world domination wing of the Open Source Community. We only need to compete against a static product for at least another two years. Two years to bring everything up to or beyond Microsoft levels. And, while our release schedules may slip occasionally, we do deliver continous innovation.
Mark me down for GNU/Linux dominance on the desktop by december of 2004.
Science fiction occasionally advances science, the communications satellite being the famous example, but the real idea is to advance society around science. As science overtakes science fiction (usually co-incidentally) society struggles to adapt. It's good that there are at least a few people who have already thought about how to respond to changes like those which happen!
Why not? We farm bees for their honey. I say that's a lot scarier (creepy and they sting!). We also bring beehives to fruit orchards to improve production (bees create more fruit then artificial insemination; no idea why but it's repeatable).
We also farm silkworms for their sort of silk. So why not spiders?
Windows could have drivers for future hardware if it wrote them more generally. Linux has a single driver for tulip ethernet controllers. There are hundreds of them, each with it's own driver on windows, most of which don't ship with it.
I can understand that most people are intimidated by such a naming scheme, but if they'd just offer the generics and incorporate them into plug-and-play, it would future-proof a lot better.
Of course, then people wouldn't need to upgrade as much.
KDE.org looks normal to me. Am I missing something?
This is looking big. I just got Freeciv down. I wish tldp.org were down -- they probably get the most traffic from purely-technical-open-sourcers of anyone (or, if not down, at least with a notice like gnome or debian). If anyone reading this has influence at LDP, you might do something.
Anybody know why gnu.org is up? That's just weird.
There's another group of significance: the "serious" technical professionals who would never think about freedom or society directly but use Linux/gcc/Gimp/whatever just because its the best tool for the job (or the best tool under budget). When they see that the developers of these tools care, and that it's not just a handful of loudmouthes, maybe they'll start paying attention.
Well put, and we need general pattent reform badly, but even legitamate software pattents tend to be a bad thing.
Consider GIFs. The algorythm there was (I believe) non-trivial. It was developed twice (IBM and Unisys?) arround the same time and pattented twice (oops!). It was also discovered independantly in academia a few times around then (once shortly before, but not widely enough published to be prior art, once shortly after, doing no good).
So what did society gain for issuing a pattent on a (for practical purposes) new and genuinly nontrivial idea? Nothing whatsoever. We would have had the same algorythm shortly thereafter.
What did we lose? We suffered over a decade of uncertainty, danger, and incompatibility in web images, ameliorated only by the fact that Unysis valued public relations over squeezing every last penny. Had Unisys' profits gone SCO-like, it could easily have been much worse.
Software pattents are a bad idea because they don't work. Experimental evidence is clear: patents decrease technological development. Furthermore, programmers don't read patents; any benefit to be gained by learning about someone else's work that way is overwhelmed by the risk of discovering that your own work is patented by someone else. We don't need patents because barriers to entry are low. We don't need millions of dollars to test an algorythm, the way we do a medicine. Software patents just get in the way.
P.S. I realize I'm a little light on evidence. I'm too rushed right now to hunt down links. They are out there.
That's probably true. The story I hear from people (mathematicians) who worked for the NSA is that they were given a problem (they can't say what) with no obvious applications to anything and told to work on it. It was speculated that some of the problems had no applications at all (yet) and were given to confuse enemy intelligence. Could be true....
In any case, I'm sure the sysadmins were told to build a computer with given specs, on a given budget and timetable, and not to worry about the actual software that would run on it.
The National Security Agency (NSA) owns many extremely powerful computers. No one knows what operating systems they run, which ones are clustered together, or what they do with them. It is widely speculated that they are trying to brute force public keys used by foreign governments, which would be in line with their official purpose, but no one knows for sure.
We would like to thank all those who are already contributing to the beta testing process and we invite everyone to participate in 9.2's development. To make sure testing the next Mandrake is a pleasing experience, Beta 2 include new versions of software.
Corrections from beta1 include:
Rpmdrake now functional
Upgrade from former versions now fully handled
New windows are now conveniently centered
Urpmi and rpmdrake still complain about missing key. This issue should be fixed in the next beta.
Improvements:
First version of Netprofile, the new network profiles manager designed for users who connect to multiple networks. Feedback is highly requested for this newly introduced feature.
Complete rewrite of userdrake (user management) in Gtk2
New bootsplash (graphical boot) with graphical design not completed
Improved localization
New font support for Indian
Enhanced drakTermServ (terminal server configurator).
New software versions:
KDE 3.1.3
GNOME 2.3.5
Evolution 1.4.4
Openldap 2.1.22
kerberos5 1.3
In short, they don't say much about it. Maybe somebody's already bittorrented it and will give us a +5 informative review? Or hasn't and will give us a +5 funny guess?
I doubt they'll do that, because if they did, we'd immediately fork the last GPL version, and they know it. They'd wind up competing with us from an equal start, knowing that the big show-case projects that give them name recognition (KDE etc.) are going with the free version.
I think Trolltech will stick with their current strategy, it seems to be working.
Sendmail vs Windows makes an interesting comparison.
Both were designed as insecure -- sendmail because the net was so small in those days that you could trust it, windows because it was intended for single-user off-net PCs.
Neither is securable. Both need to be replaced while maintaining backwards compatibility. Windows got Windows NT, Sendmail got qmail, postfix, exim and others.
Windows NT is still terribly insecure, qmail/postfix/exim are rock solid. Why?
Because the mail compatibility relies on a well thought out open standard (RFC822) whereas Windows relies on an entire slapped-together API.
So stop being overly critical and learn something!:-)
Well yeah for the actually-doing-the-work part, but the getting-it-run-automatically part is sure to require that horrible RPCish stuff. At least I wouldn't have to write GUI code.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, MS software and national security is probably not a life-or-death issue. At least, I hope it's not.
On the other side of the book piracy debate stands Eric Flint, who's artistic credentials don't nearly match up with Ellison's, but who has collected more hard data regarding the effects of piracy on artists than everyone else put together (books music and movies. He has also taken far more personal risk based on his conclusions than anyone else I can think of.
What microsoft is doing is no different than what Vinge did in True Names searching for Slimy Limey's identity back in the 1970s. Now, if MS actually makes this work, instead of just talking about it, that would be innovative, assuming no one else had done it between now and then.
Innovation doesn't count until it works, which, for microsoft, is usually long after its announced -- if ever.
The file's has a .mov extension, but neither file nor xine seems able to recognize it. Does anyone know what format it is, and how to play it?
class foo{...}
}class bar{...}
int f(foo){...}
int f(bar){...}
void x(Object o){
Yess, you could make foo and bar implement some interface, but the complexity costs quickly go through the roof. Yes, you could auto-generate that code (and they said Java was high-level!) but not for library classes. Yes you could wrap those, but this is getting really ugly, with so much code generation you may as well just write in python or something.
Are you sure about this? That would mean there must exist legal C++ code that will never finish compiling. I have a really hard time picturing code like that.
I wonder which one they benchmanrked.
In the past, we thought about improvements in transportation, weapons, manufacturing, and other fields that left us bascally as we were. But the interesting ideas of the near future are in communication and thought -- things that will change *us*. That's a lot harder to imagine.
Yeah, this idea is largely from Vernor Vinge, an excellent science fiction writer who's still writing (but not fast enough!).
It makes as much sense as anything SCO's said.
Hey, I just realized -- I'm typing this. I don't have to keep a straight face!
Think about it this way. Most people own a lot of music that they're not listening to right now. Imagine if they lent it out to people who wanted it, with the ability to claim it back if they decided to listen to it. People could buy a lot less music, and still listen to just as much.
Now scale this to the internet and automate all the searching, and hardly anyone will buy music again (some people will have to for each new album, and real fans will want a reliable copy, but that's it).
Totally legal, maybe a good idea, really sucks for the artists (or at least the record labels). I wonder if we'll see it soon.
But this uestion shouldn't be decided by slashdoters picking numbers out of the ether any more than by vested interests bidding on it. It should be decided by historical study, detailed simulation, or (if nessesary) experiment. I wish someone were trying.
Mark me down for GNU/Linux dominance on the desktop by december of 2004.
Science fiction occasionally advances science, the communications satellite being the famous example, but the real idea is to advance society around science. As science overtakes science fiction (usually co-incidentally) society struggles to adapt. It's good that there are at least a few people who have already thought about how to respond to changes like those which happen!
We also farm silkworms for their sort of silk. So why not spiders?
I can understand that most people are intimidated by such a naming scheme, but if they'd just offer the generics and incorporate them into plug-and-play, it would future-proof a lot better.
Of course, then people wouldn't need to upgrade as much.
This is looking big. I just got Freeciv down. I wish tldp.org were down -- they probably get the most traffic from purely-technical-open-sourcers of anyone (or, if not down, at least with a notice like gnome or debian). If anyone reading this has influence at LDP, you might do something.
Anybody know why gnu.org is up? That's just weird.
There's another group of significance: the "serious" technical professionals who would never think about freedom or society directly but use Linux/gcc/Gimp/whatever just because its the best tool for the job (or the best tool under budget). When they see that the developers of these tools care, and that it's not just a handful of loudmouthes, maybe they'll start paying attention.
Consider GIFs. The algorythm there was (I believe) non-trivial. It was developed twice (IBM and Unisys?) arround the same time and pattented twice (oops!). It was also discovered independantly in academia a few times around then (once shortly before, but not widely enough published to be prior art, once shortly after, doing no good).
So what did society gain for issuing a pattent on a (for practical purposes) new and genuinly nontrivial idea? Nothing whatsoever. We would have had the same algorythm shortly thereafter.
What did we lose? We suffered over a decade of uncertainty, danger, and incompatibility in web images, ameliorated only by the fact that Unysis valued public relations over squeezing every last penny. Had Unisys' profits gone SCO-like, it could easily have been much worse.
Software pattents are a bad idea because they don't work. Experimental evidence is clear: patents decrease technological development. Furthermore, programmers don't read patents; any benefit to be gained by learning about someone else's work that way is overwhelmed by the risk of discovering that your own work is patented by someone else. We don't need patents because barriers to entry are low. We don't need millions of dollars to test an algorythm, the way we do a medicine. Software patents just get in the way.
P.S. I realize I'm a little light on evidence. I'm too rushed right now to hunt down links. They are out there.
In any case, I'm sure the sysadmins were told to build a computer with given specs, on a given budget and timetable, and not to worry about the actual software that would run on it.
The National Security Agency (NSA) owns many extremely powerful computers. No one knows what operating systems they run, which ones are clustered together, or what they do with them. It is widely speculated that they are trying to brute force public keys used by foreign governments, which would be in line with their official purpose, but no one knows for sure.
We would like to thank all those who are already contributing to the beta testing process and we invite everyone to participate in 9.2's development. To make sure testing the next Mandrake is a pleasing experience, Beta 2 include new versions of software.
Corrections from beta1 include:
- Rpmdrake now functional
- Upgrade from former versions now fully handled
- New windows are now conveniently centered
Urpmi and rpmdrake still complain about missing key. This issue should be fixed in the next beta.Improvements:
New software versions:
In short, they don't say much about it. Maybe somebody's already bittorrented it and will give us a +5 informative review? Or hasn't and will give us a +5 funny guess?
I think Trolltech will stick with their current strategy, it seems to be working.
Both were designed as insecure -- sendmail because the net was so small in those days that you could trust it, windows because it was intended for single-user off-net PCs.
Neither is securable. Both need to be replaced while maintaining backwards compatibility. Windows got Windows NT, Sendmail got qmail, postfix, exim and others.
Windows NT is still terribly insecure, qmail/postfix/exim are rock solid. Why?
Because the mail compatibility relies on a well thought out open standard (RFC822) whereas Windows relies on an entire slapped-together API.
So stop being overly critical and learn something! :-)
Well yeah for the actually-doing-the-work part, but the getting-it-run-automatically part is sure to require that horrible RPCish stuff. At least I wouldn't have to write GUI code.