The gravel roads have to be a certain thickness (generally about 6 ft high) so that, when areas are eventually decommissioned and the permafrost underneath will not have been affected. Buildings are built up off the tundra so animals can walk under them, etc.
Actually those construction methods have nothing to do with any evil greenies impinging on some poor picked on corporation's profitable endeavors. Construction on top of permafrost presents unique challenges to the long term viability of any project be it roads or buildings. What you are describing are hard earned engineering techniques that were preceeded by many construction failures on Alaska's permafrost and have zilch to do with greenies or environmental protection.
The economic crisis was a completely separate issue, caused by funny business in the housing markets - particularly the insurance markets.
The increases in oil prices could have the long term potential of damaging the economy, but I think your conclusion on the impact of oil prices is correct. The oil prices surged and quickly subsided before they could have any significant effect beyond stirring up anger.
However, I would say the funny business in the housing market was only part of the cause for the current economic debacle. Aside from the games finance, investment and insurance companies were playing with large blocks of risky mortgages was the borrowing of funds from the Fed at very low interest rates and then lending that money to every warm body on the street combined with out of control spending practices of the masses and inflation offset by incomes that had turned stagnant around 2000 and unless you were in the top 10% income brackets was flat until the meltdown where the income quickly dropped to near nil for those who ended up without a job.
Increases in consumer spending and inflation combined with stagnant wages by itself would have eventually been enough to kill the economy. The banking greed only added fuel to the fire. In fact, if wages for the other 90% of the wage earners had continued their rate increase seen in the 1990s then credit would not be as much of an issue as it is today. Banks have money they've borrowed from the Fed that they could lend to individuals, but they wont as most individuals wages are already strapped with debt.
So when someone says "enviro-nazi", they are talking about someone who is concerned for the environment at the expense of all else. They are dogmatic in their beliefs, and generally follow an "it's our way or we'll [try to] destroy you" philosophy. No compromise, if you disagree you are wrong and must be eliminated.
There are a number of people who are like that, they generally head various environmental organizations, and the term "enviro-nazi" is very descriptive and only slightly exaggerated.
Just curious, where are standing enviro-nazi armies, the concentration camps, the death camps, the slave labor camps, which nations have they invaded and which governments have they toppled, etc?
It seems we need to mobilize the Allies for World War III, but I'm sure exactly who or where it is exactly we should be directing our combined armed forces to attack.
Hmm, then again, perhaps even this so called slight exaggeration is plain hyperbole. Damn, no substance, just more blathering at the mouth, and I thought we were going to see some action.
Windows XP is still being sold, right? That brand new computers are shipping by the thousand every single day with Windows XP as the OEM-installed operating system?
It appears that Microsoft's compromise to allow cheap XP Home licenses on netbooks in an attempt to block the sudden surge in new linux users could backfire. No biggie though, it seems they can produce crap and just shell out a billion to make it go away.
Using the XBox 360 as a parallel computing platform when "major reworking of any previous code framework is required" seems like a huge risk when considering the XBox 360 reliability problems.
Perhaps the newer systems have better reliability, I only hope for their sake they did their homework before buying the boxes.
It is not at all unusual. What would be unusual would be for a worm or virus to actually compromise Linux machines in an automated fashion and make them bots.
There is a continuous flood of SSH brute force attacks on any *nix machine connected to the internet. All one has to do is monitor their log files for verification.
They are not even sophisticated attacks, they are attempting to login using lame passwords, i.e. after watching the attacks for awhile I set up a box to see what they were doing and created a user name test with the password test based on the fact I could see them using test as one of the users for the attack and suspecting it was a dumb password attack.
It wasn't long before the system was "compromised" and likely recorded on the other end as a successful attack. Several hours later the account was again accessed and various applications downloaded and executed as the test user. One of these applications connected to the EFNET IRC network and joined a channel.
Using another system I connected to the IRC network in way I thought would be inconspicuous and monitored what was happening. Sure enough there were two individuals chatting it up in the channel and sending commands to hundreds of compromised systems.
While reviewing the various compromised systems I noted that they were all *nix machines of one type or another. This was a few years back so I believe you are correct in stating that this is nothing new. What would have been new is if a botnet like this was discovered to be from a real hack and not some lame password login scan.
I don't have a problem with it being called a linux botnet, but until they can come up with an explanation for the means by which the systems were compromised, other than the likely lame password attacks, its not really news.
And later he added, "Hey you kids, get off my damn lawn!";-)
Interesting view on Grove's statement, I assume you are basing that on the belief that all the patent trolling and threats are something new? Actually Grove's statement is fresh and enlightening as patent trolling and threats have been around for almost as long as the USPTO. Look up some history on the sewing machine patent wars of the 1850's or the aircraft patent wars in the early 1900's.
But Mr. Grove is correct - government often makes things stagnate and hold steady
I can't say I know Grove's political opinions and beliefs but you seem to be reading your own bias into his statements. Grove does not say government often makes things stagnate and hold steady, in fact he is stating that certain industries are already stagnated and holding steady and the government intervention is simply maintaining the status quo.
From the 1950s to the 1980s the only speeds available were 110 bit/s and 300 bit/s. If AT&T still held that monopoly, we'd still have 0.3 kbit/s modems and the late-90s web explosion would have been impossible (too slow).
Actually from the 1950's to the 1980's the only affordable data speeds for a home connection were in the 110bps to 300bps range. This was not due to the lack of technology development by a government mandated monopoly, in fact quite the opposite. The government mandated monopoly created a massive telecom infrastructure and AT&T was continually working on the technology to interconnect that system efficiently and effectively. The T-Carrier was designed and implemented in the late 1950's and early 1960's and provided 1.5Mbps. ISDN became available in many areas in the mid to late 1980's and provided two 64Kbps lines that could be bonded into one 128Kbps line. I still have an old 3-Com ISDN modem sitting in a box in the basement.:)
So from the 1950's to the 1980's there were bit rates available well above the 100 to 300 bps you noted. This may not have been apparent to home computer users connecting with POTS modems at the time because these services were not marketed to and the equipment likely was not affordable for a home user.
But the Carterphone decision (circa 1981) eliminated that monopoly and multiple companies began a "speedwar" that rapidly moved speeds from 0.3 to 56k in only ten years time.
I disagree. The decision made way for long distance pricing wars, but had no effect on data rates. The explosion in data rates came with the rise of the internet and was made possible by the companies developing modems they sold to house holds and the racks at the ISPs. The telecoms had nothing to do with this other than providing the analog POTS connection between the two. Now the bandwidth explosion after 56k was addressed by the telecoms as the POTS had reached its limit and it was up to the telecoms to provide better infrastructure.
But there is an interesting point from your statement, "eliminated that monopoly", that more than government controls affects the development of technology and better pricing and services for end users.
Two cases in point, the patent wars between sewing machine companies and aircraft manufacturers I noted earlier ended and industries prospered once the patents were pooled to eliminate the monopolies. In the case of the sewing machine patents the industry players created the pool, in the case of the aircraft industry the government had to step in and create the pool.
Now I'm not saying the government should start jumping into the markets and controlling everything, to the contrary, they should stay out and only get involved when it is necessary for the benefit of the p
I would argue that in many cases its simply laziness on the part of developers rather than not caring. Obviously people care whether their credit card number and personal information are acquired by someone with devious intentions, but when its not your data in the system and going the extra mile to implement what are sometimes even the most basic security measures in an application requires a few more hours or days of coding, many developers will just dismiss the extra work.
Case in point, SQL injection attacks on web applications. A very common attack vector and one that has seen extensive work in methods and code to make applications more robust, and yet most applications avoid the most basic security feature provided by a database engine backing an application, database user permissions.
Analysis of many web applications will reveal that they implement a single database user for all queries and this database user is often times the owner of the database with full privileges. A mistake in the application code that allows an SQL injection attack provides the attacker with the power to access or change any information in the database that pleases them.
Implementing multiple users with varying levels of access to the tables in a database does require some additional work but is very feasible and yet the response I have received from some developers when presenting such an idea as a way to protect a web sites database is often "it would be easier to just do database backups and restore a trashed database". Simply lazy.
The purpose of patents (and copyright) is to promote innovation. They are not natural rights like life, liberty, etc. If they do not promote innovation, they should not exist.
Outstanding!!!
Lawyers have managed through case law to twist the purpose of patents so far beyond their original intent that, as you can see here in this thread, people believe today that they have a right to monopoly control over ever piddly assed idea they can come up with and somebody should pay them continuously for being such an ass.
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The author of the original article is therefore correct in his assessment that software patents should be ruled out by the Supreme Court. The market in and of itself is promoting the progress in computer software science as is noted multiple times in the article. Software patents on the other hand are impeding progress by presenting legal barriers to progress.
It is plain to see with the current legal mire involving software companies that software patent law most definitely does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the realm of software and is therefore unconstitutional.
August 11News: Leaving the GPL Behind Companies are running in fear from the GPL, some nasty discussions ensue about the crazy GPL zealots.
August 3Politics: Microsoft Redefines "Open Standards" Microsoft stirs up some licensing issues, GPL gets bashed, somebody actually claims the GPL is more restrictive than commercial licenses, lol.
July 14Developers: 6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL Developer decides to release his code under GPL, peers get angry that he doesn't use a more permissive license, personal attack discussion ensues, somebody else notes being attacked for not using the GPL.
June 26 News: Copyfraud Is Stealing the Public Domain Interesting article is posted about companies taking public domain works, making some changes, slapping a copyright on the derivative work and charging for it. A troll posts a rant about the GPL and slashdot readers in general, off topic GPL discussion ensures, somebody claims "Slashdot, like GPL, is anti-profit", whatever.
The GPL is a popular license and a fair percentage of the open source code out there is released under the GPL but at the same time there seems to be a highly vocal group that strongly dislikes the GPL even though it in no way affects them unless they are using the code released under it. Therefore its rather obvious somebody wants the GPLed code very bad but has an aversion to the giving back part of the license AND are not satisfied with leaving well enough alone. Yeah, whiners.
BTW, I did not single out people who favor BSD style licenses, yes the article was written by somebody who prefers a BSD style license and believes the GPL is a mine that is going to blow your legs off or something to that effect but for the most part I believe the open source communities support and feed off of one another. With the continual flow of articles and rants on the GPL it simply appears there are some out there with ulterior motives well beyond having a more liberal view on open source licensing.
The idea that it is a "minefield" is just inflammatory nonsense.
I suppose that depends on how you look at it.
If your considering using open source code to add value to your product rather than invest in the development of your own software and have no desire to contribute back to the open source project that made the code available in the first place because you realize this will only make it easier for a competitor to create a competing product in the market place, then the the open source licensing options are a minefield. That pesky GPL keeps getting in the way.
Of course that is not how this article was worded, it seems to be making an argument that for an open source developer who does not choose a license that makes it possible to create derivatives of their project as closed source is somehow stepping on a mine. So yes, it appears you are right, just a GPL troll article.
I wonder sometimes what the motives are behind these articles that profess the importance of avoiding the GPL for your own personal open source projects. I find this one ludicrous as it boils down to "if you license your source code using the GPL then you can't use my source code".
Well, that works both ways, and with the vast source of GPLed code out there it seems to me that this argument supports the use of the GPL in your open source projects to ensure you have access to that pool.
And for those who don't want to use the GPL for whatever reason they don't have to, but they really should stop drooling over other peoples GPLed code and it does them no good to continue the endless whining about the GPL. They should spend their time writing their own software and releasing it under whatever license they want instead of writing inane articles about the GPL.
Early 20th century the US government tool ~3% of GDP.... Government is threatening to take over 40+ to even 50+ % of GDP.
I'm curious as to your source for your facts.
Fact Sheets: Taxes History of the U.S. Tax System 1918 - Tax rates set at 25% of GDP 1920s - Tax rate reduced to 13% of GDP 1932 through 1936 - Tax rates increased, by 1940 tax rate at 6.8% of GDP 1941 - 7.6% of GDP 1944 - 20.9% of GDP 1945 - 20.4% of GDP 1950 - 14.4% 1952 - 19% 1960s through 1970s - 19.4% up to 20.8% 1986 - 17.5% 1990 - 18% 2000 - 20.8%
Even the Heritage Foundation that continually makes mind numbingly brain dead conclusions that in some cases contradict the charts on their own web site don't show future receipts in the 40% to 50% range. Their end of the world predictions only go as high as 25.5%.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for reducing tax burdens but lets not jump to conclusions and assume simply cutting taxes will instil wealth and prosperity into the heartland. In fact to the contrary, the facts show that something else is occurring along with the tax cuts that results in a detrimental affect to the working class and their ability to make a living.
First, the documents to which the article links were not written with the intention of convincing U.S. employers to hire students who are non-residents of the United States in place of students who are citizens. Non-resident students are likely no different than any other student in college and need supplemental income to pay for their education. The documents purpose is to enlighten employers about the facts about hiring non-resident students who are in the country on a student visa. Perhaps the author would like to take it one step further and see if they can incite hatred in legal aliens who are here working under a green card as these pamphlets surely must be convincing U.S. employers to hire foreign students studying under a visa in place of legal immigrant workers. Or perhaps not.
Second, if the author bothered to read IRS Publication 519, as the pamphlets suggest, they would have realized that any foreign student studying under a visa in the united states will fall under Social Security and FICA taxes if they are determined to have a substantial presence in the United States.
You will be considered a U.S. resident for tax purposes if you meet the substantial presence test for calendar year 2008. To meet this test, you must be physically present in the United States on at least:
1.
31 days during 2008, and
2.
183 days during the 3-year period that includes 2008, 2007, and 2006, counting:
1.
All the days you were present in 2008, and
2.
of the days you were present in 2007, and
3.
of the days you were present in 2006.
If a foreign student spends any more time in the U.S. than is necessary to attend school then it is likely they will fall under the substantial presence test and an employer will be required to pay Social Security and FICA taxes for the student they hired. A foreign student who is only available to work a fraction of each year is not a threat to the resident work force or the social services systems paid for by that work force.
As a member of the unemployed I understand the difficulties many people are going through but we can maintain a semblance of intelligence and become informed before making poorly researched rants.
When are we going to stop all this behaviour by 2% of the population which is hurting the other 98%?
Don't wait for "we", its up to you.
The people who are actually the means of production generating the wealth need to stop over paying the 2% for the products the 98% produced and the 98% need to stop working for wages that are well below what their production is worth to pay the 2%'s wages that are well above what they actually produce.
Easier said than done but it can be done with a lot of pain, paying off debts, cutting expenses, building savings, quitting jobs, refusing employment offers, starting personal businesses, etc.
The only way to stop the 2% is to cut off their supply of revenue and production.
the ability to do things like this makes pricing of shares more efficient to the actual value of the market (increasing the price of undervalued stocks and decreasing the price of overvalued stocks) and making money flow rather than stay stagnant.
What you are describing is the market before these high frequency trading systems were developed. Everyone has access to the same information, they process it to make a decision on the current and projected value of a stock, and they place orders accordingly. Moving from the ancient floor and telephones to an electronic system with internet brokers increased the speed of the system and the number of players. And these high frequency trading systems do the same thing, but they do something else as well.
1) They use speed and volume to muscle in on traders who have performed their analysis and placed their orders and take a portion of the profits the slower traders may have acquired through their analysis and order. They didn't add liquidity, efficiency or even set the market price, they are simply stepping in between the buyers and sellers and creating multiple unnecessary trades to ensure a portion of the profits from those trades end up in their pockets.
2) And the systems are used to manipulate the pricing of stocks by placing fake orders that are removed before the orders can be acted upon because there was no intent to buy or sell in the first place, just to put some numbers on a board to force a reaction.
What it comes down to is you have a small group that have created a shadow market of orders that most traders never see and the use of systems to place and remove bogus orders on the real market to manipulate prices. I have watched NASDAQ level 2 quotes over the years and it has reached the point where today they are meaningless as the orders you think you see are not a reflection of the true orders hiding in the shadows and you can watch massive blocks of orders appear and vanish for no obvious reason as the stock price changes. In fact, I swear you can sometimes see orders flying back and forth as the high frequency trade systems of competitors wage a cyber trading battle on the open market. NASDAQ is actually paid to provide access to that information and it sure looks like its just a scam at this point.
I think you are missing a very important point, Once MS saw their error, they corrected it without anyone pointing to the need.
Actually, based on the articles someone did point out the need for the fix in their licensing and source code release. But I do see your point and I admit that it is quite possible they simply made a mistake and had every intention of following the GPL. However, the reaction of the community should come as no surprise considering Microsoft's historical stance on the GPL and the fact that they didn't simple release the entire driver under the GPL in the first place.
I guess we can chalk one up to lessons learned, they did the right thing, now we should move on.
Happens all the time. Individual programmers don't know how to code something, so they look for an answer on Google. Unfortunately the code they end up copying is from a GPLed project.
I guess I'm not seeing this "treachery" of which you're going on about.
You may want to click on the links to the articles to see the treachery. Here is a quote from one of the articles...
Pigs are flying low: Why Microsoft open-sourced its Linux drivers "Microsoft originally was licensing the Linux drivers, also known as the Linux Integration Components (LIC), in a way that was in violation of the GPL. It was offering them under a combination of the GPL and a closed source license."
Nobody cares that Linksys/Cisco uses GPL code in their cheap routers.
The whole idea of releasing source code under the GPL is to make it available for use. The copyright holders of that code do not take issue with corporations using the code, they take issue with corporations when they violate the license terms under which the source code is made available to them for use. As was the case with Linksys/Cisco.
The use of the term viral to describe the GPL is meant to attribute the negative connotations of virii to the licensing terms.
A virus spreads, infects and causes disease in an unsuspecting host.
Source code released under the GPL does not spread, infect or disease unsuspecting hosts. Source code licensed under the GPL is used with intent.
The only way the host project could be unsuspecting would be if the source code was acquired and utilized without bothering to perform due diligence to understand the licensing terms which made the source code available. Something that seems very out of character for a multi-billion dollar corporation that continually harps on customers about licensing violations.
If due diligence is not completed and a project unknowingly incorporates GPLed code it still does not spread and infect or disease their proprietary code. The GPLed code can be removed from the project, which rather than removing a virus is more like removing a transplanted organ in keeping with your bodily allegory. Of course once you remove the organ from the body the body likely will die unless you get another organ.
If you violate the terms of the GPL and resolve the issue by removing the open source code from your project there still will be the issue of damages caused by violating the license. The damages and the body missing the organ are likely the reason corporations easily give in to the terms of the GPL, not because it is viral.
MS can never build bridges with many of the software red loons who frequent this site.
Once bitten twice shy.
And the irony, you consider a multi sourced market where the actual producers of the licensed source code retain their copyrigths versus handing it over to a single corporation to be communist, "red", and a single sourced monopoly controlled market to be free market capitalism. And copyright holders protecting their licensed source code are insane, "loons", while a fat ageing corporate officer jumping around on a stage in front of subordinates to the point of causing bodily harm and proceeding to limp around the stage is sanity.
Yeah, there are loons here its just not who you think it is.
Microsoft have added weight to their argument that businesses shouldn't use GPL because it's viral nature
Actually it seems they have added weight to their argument that businesses should adhere to the licensing terms for the software they use. Microsoft puts massive resources into fighting violations of their licensing agreements with end users of their products and here they are caught violating the licensing terms for software they have licensed.
So in the end Microsoft should write their own code and refrain from stealing open source code if they have no intention of adhering to the licensing terms that made the open source code available. The GPL is not viral, otherwise they would be releasing ALL of their code under the GPL.
what's Apple's motive here? Because if I made a hardware product and someone developed a new novel way to utilize it, my sales would increase. Sure people might not be using my software that goes with the hardware but who cares?
The motive is greed, the objective is monopoly control.
Apple makes money off more than just hardware, they make a killing off software and services as well. It is no secret that many businesses in the United States utilize ethically questionable and often times out right illegal business tactics to establish and maintain monopolies that provide an opportunity for the business to control the market prices of their products rather than the other way around.
None of this is new and Federal legislation was passed to provide the Justice Department with the means to stop this type of activity, note the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Unfortunately there seems to have been a shift in the thinking in the Executive branch and the Department of Justice as one of the most recent and significant cases, the DOJ case against Microsoft, resulted in a slap on the wrist and business as usual to this day.
Conceivably someone bigger whose market Redhat represents a threat to, could seek to buy them in order to just kill their product line, and make sure Linux never has a year of the desktop. That's one of my worst fears in all this.
Don't sweat it too much. Red Hat's product line is the Red Hat Network, not linux. Microsoft could buy up Red Hat and destroy their support business but they would simply be replaced by another support vendor, either an up start or an existing vendor, i.e. Oracle, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Novell, etc.
You seem to be new to linux so I'll explain it. The $80 is a subscription to the Red Hat Network support service, it is not a purchase price for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
In fact there have been multiple distribution forks/clones created from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source files. You download the source files, remove the Red Hat trade marks and logos, compile and distribute.:)
So with that bit of knowledge under your belt you can now intelligently discuss Red Hat's position in the F/OSS community and join the rest of us in celebrating this acknowledgement of Red Hat's business success based on open source.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually those construction methods have nothing to do with any evil greenies impinging on some poor picked on corporation's profitable endeavors. Construction on top of permafrost presents unique challenges to the long term viability of any project be it roads or buildings. What you are describing are hard earned engineering techniques that were preceeded by many construction failures on Alaska's permafrost and have zilch to do with greenies or environmental protection.
The increases in oil prices could have the long term potential of damaging the economy, but I think your conclusion on the impact of oil prices is correct. The oil prices surged and quickly subsided before they could have any significant effect beyond stirring up anger.
However, I would say the funny business in the housing market was only part of the cause for the current economic debacle. Aside from the games finance, investment and insurance companies were playing with large blocks of risky mortgages was the borrowing of funds from the Fed at very low interest rates and then lending that money to every warm body on the street combined with out of control spending practices of the masses and inflation offset by incomes that had turned stagnant around 2000 and unless you were in the top 10% income brackets was flat until the meltdown where the income quickly dropped to near nil for those who ended up without a job.
Increases in consumer spending and inflation combined with stagnant wages by itself would have eventually been enough to kill the economy. The banking greed only added fuel to the fire. In fact, if wages for the other 90% of the wage earners had continued their rate increase seen in the 1990s then credit would not be as much of an issue as it is today. Banks have money they've borrowed from the Fed that they could lend to individuals, but they wont as most individuals wages are already strapped with debt.
Just curious, where are standing enviro-nazi armies, the concentration camps, the death camps, the slave labor camps, which nations have they invaded and which governments have they toppled, etc?
It seems we need to mobilize the Allies for World War III, but I'm sure exactly who or where it is exactly we should be directing our combined armed forces to attack.
Hmm, then again, perhaps even this so called slight exaggeration is plain hyperbole. Damn, no substance, just more blathering at the mouth, and I thought we were going to see some action.
Can you say Class Action Lawsuit? LOL
It appears that Microsoft's compromise to allow cheap XP Home licenses on netbooks in an attempt to block the sudden surge in new linux users could backfire. No biggie though, it seems they can produce crap and just shell out a billion to make it go away.
Using the XBox 360 as a parallel computing platform when "major reworking of any previous code framework is required" seems like a huge risk when considering the XBox 360 reliability problems.
Perhaps the newer systems have better reliability, I only hope for their sake they did their homework before buying the boxes.
There is a continuous flood of SSH brute force attacks on any *nix machine connected to the internet. All one has to do is monitor their log files for verification.
They are not even sophisticated attacks, they are attempting to login using lame passwords, i.e. after watching the attacks for awhile I set up a box to see what they were doing and created a user name test with the password test based on the fact I could see them using test as one of the users for the attack and suspecting it was a dumb password attack.
It wasn't long before the system was "compromised" and likely recorded on the other end as a successful attack. Several hours later the account was again accessed and various applications downloaded and executed as the test user. One of these applications connected to the EFNET IRC network and joined a channel.
Using another system I connected to the IRC network in way I thought would be inconspicuous and monitored what was happening. Sure enough there were two individuals chatting it up in the channel and sending commands to hundreds of compromised systems.
While reviewing the various compromised systems I noted that they were all *nix machines of one type or another. This was a few years back so I believe you are correct in stating that this is nothing new. What would have been new is if a botnet like this was discovered to be from a real hack and not some lame password login scan.
I don't have a problem with it being called a linux botnet, but until they can come up with an explanation for the means by which the systems were compromised, other than the likely lame password attacks, its not really news.
Interesting view on Grove's statement, I assume you are basing that on the belief that all the patent trolling and threats are something new? Actually Grove's statement is fresh and enlightening as patent trolling and threats have been around for almost as long as the USPTO. Look up some history on the sewing machine patent wars of the 1850's or the aircraft patent wars in the early 1900's.
I can't say I know Grove's political opinions and beliefs but you seem to be reading your own bias into his statements. Grove does not say government often makes things stagnate and hold steady, in fact he is stating that certain industries are already stagnated and holding steady and the government intervention is simply maintaining the status quo.
Actually from the 1950's to the 1980's the only affordable data speeds for a home connection were in the 110bps to 300bps range. This was not due to the lack of technology development by a government mandated monopoly, in fact quite the opposite. The government mandated monopoly created a massive telecom infrastructure and AT&T was continually working on the technology to interconnect that system efficiently and effectively. The T-Carrier was designed and implemented in the late 1950's and early 1960's and provided 1.5Mbps. ISDN became available in many areas in the mid to late 1980's and provided two 64Kbps lines that could be bonded into one 128Kbps line. I still have an old 3-Com ISDN modem sitting in a box in the basement. :)
So from the 1950's to the 1980's there were bit rates available well above the 100 to 300 bps you noted. This may not have been apparent to home computer users connecting with POTS modems at the time because these services were not marketed to and the equipment likely was not affordable for a home user.
I disagree. The decision made way for long distance pricing wars, but had no effect on data rates. The explosion in data rates came with the rise of the internet and was made possible by the companies developing modems they sold to house holds and the racks at the ISPs. The telecoms had nothing to do with this other than providing the analog POTS connection between the two. Now the bandwidth explosion after 56k was addressed by the telecoms as the POTS had reached its limit and it was up to the telecoms to provide better infrastructure.
But there is an interesting point from your statement, "eliminated that monopoly", that more than government controls affects the development of technology and better pricing and services for end users.
Two cases in point, the patent wars between sewing machine companies and aircraft manufacturers I noted earlier ended and industries prospered once the patents were pooled to eliminate the monopolies. In the case of the sewing machine patents the industry players created the pool, in the case of the aircraft industry the government had to step in and create the pool.
Now I'm not saying the government should start jumping into the markets and controlling everything, to the contrary, they should stay out and only get involved when it is necessary for the benefit of the p
I would argue that in many cases its simply laziness on the part of developers rather than not caring. Obviously people care whether their credit card number and personal information are acquired by someone with devious intentions, but when its not your data in the system and going the extra mile to implement what are sometimes even the most basic security measures in an application requires a few more hours or days of coding, many developers will just dismiss the extra work.
Case in point, SQL injection attacks on web applications. A very common attack vector and one that has seen extensive work in methods and code to make applications more robust, and yet most applications avoid the most basic security feature provided by a database engine backing an application, database user permissions.
Analysis of many web applications will reveal that they implement a single database user for all queries and this database user is often times the owner of the database with full privileges. A mistake in the application code that allows an SQL injection attack provides the attacker with the power to access or change any information in the database that pleases them.
Implementing multiple users with varying levels of access to the tables in a database does require some additional work but is very feasible and yet the response I have received from some developers when presenting such an idea as a way to protect a web sites database is often "it would be easier to just do database backups and restore a trashed database". Simply lazy.
Outstanding!!!
Lawyers have managed through case law to twist the purpose of patents so far beyond their original intent that, as you can see here in this thread, people believe today that they have a right to monopoly control over ever piddly assed idea they can come up with and somebody should pay them continuously for being such an ass.
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution:
The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The author of the original article is therefore correct in his assessment that software patents should be ruled out by the Supreme Court. The market in and of itself is promoting the progress in computer software science as is noted multiple times in the article. Software patents on the other hand are impeding progress by presenting legal barriers to progress.
It is plain to see with the current legal mire involving software companies that software patent law most definitely does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the realm of software and is therefore unconstitutional.
August 25Developers: Getting Through the FOSS License Minefield
GPL is a mine in a minefield of open source licenses, followed with the usually complaints about the GPL
August 16Linux: GPL Case Against Danish Satellite Provider
GPL is violated by multiple corporations, ensuing conversation was actually tame.
August 11News: Leaving the GPL Behind
Companies are running in fear from the GPL, some nasty discussions ensue about the crazy GPL zealots.
August 3Politics: Microsoft Redefines "Open Standards"
Microsoft stirs up some licensing issues, GPL gets bashed, somebody actually claims the GPL is more restrictive than commercial licenses, lol.
August 1 Ask Slashdot: The Ethics of Selling GPLed Software For the iPhone
Somebody ports a GPL project to the iPhone, original developer complains, a very good discussion ensues.
July 14Developers: 6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL
Developer decides to release his code under GPL, peers get angry that he doesn't use a more permissive license, personal attack discussion ensues, somebody else notes being attacked for not using the GPL.
June 26 News: Copyfraud Is Stealing the Public Domain
Interesting article is posted about companies taking public domain works, making some changes, slapping a copyright on the derivative work and charging for it. A troll posts a rant about the GPL and slashdot readers in general, off topic GPL discussion ensures, somebody claims "Slashdot, like GPL, is anti-profit", whatever.
The GPL is a popular license and a fair percentage of the open source code out there is released under the GPL but at the same time there seems to be a highly vocal group that strongly dislikes the GPL even though it in no way affects them unless they are using the code released under it. Therefore its rather obvious somebody wants the GPLed code very bad but has an aversion to the giving back part of the license AND are not satisfied with leaving well enough alone. Yeah, whiners.
BTW, I did not single out people who favor BSD style licenses, yes the article was written by somebody who prefers a BSD style license and believes the GPL is a mine that is going to blow your legs off or something to that effect but for the most part I believe the open source communities support and feed off of one another. With the continual flow of articles and rants on the GPL it simply appears there are some out there with ulterior motives well beyond having a more liberal view on open source licensing.
I suppose that depends on how you look at it.
If your considering using open source code to add value to your product rather than invest in the development of your own software and have no desire to contribute back to the open source project that made the code available in the first place because you realize this will only make it easier for a competitor to create a competing product in the market place, then the the open source licensing options are a minefield. That pesky GPL keeps getting in the way.
Of course that is not how this article was worded, it seems to be making an argument that for an open source developer who does not choose a license that makes it possible to create derivatives of their project as closed source is somehow stepping on a mine. So yes, it appears you are right, just a GPL troll article.
I wonder sometimes what the motives are behind these articles that profess the importance of avoiding the GPL for your own personal open source projects. I find this one ludicrous as it boils down to "if you license your source code using the GPL then you can't use my source code".
Well, that works both ways, and with the vast source of GPLed code out there it seems to me that this argument supports the use of the GPL in your open source projects to ensure you have access to that pool.
And for those who don't want to use the GPL for whatever reason they don't have to, but they really should stop drooling over other peoples GPLed code and it does them no good to continue the endless whining about the GPL. They should spend their time writing their own software and releasing it under whatever license they want instead of writing inane articles about the GPL.
I'm curious as to your source for your facts.
Fact Sheets: Taxes History of the U.S. Tax System
1918 - Tax rates set at 25% of GDP
1920s - Tax rate reduced to 13% of GDP
1932 through 1936 - Tax rates increased, by 1940 tax rate at 6.8% of GDP
1941 - 7.6% of GDP
1944 - 20.9% of GDP
1945 - 20.4% of GDP
1950 - 14.4%
1952 - 19%
1960s through 1970s - 19.4% up to 20.8%
1986 - 17.5%
1990 - 18%
2000 - 20.8%
R Davis' receipts and outlays plots
1950 through 2008 - Tax rate varied from 14.5% to 20.8% of GDP
List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP
United States - Tax rate at 28.2% of GDP
Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History
1965 through 2008 - Tax rate varied from 15.5% to 20.9% of GDP
Even the Heritage Foundation that continually makes mind numbingly brain dead conclusions that in some cases contradict the charts on their own web site don't show future receipts in the 40% to 50% range. Their end of the world predictions only go as high as 25.5%.
It is also telling that the very worst of times seem to be preceded by tax cuts that resulted in some of the lowest tax rates versus GDP. Note the booming 1920s "The economy boomed during the 1920s and increasing revenues from the income tax followed. This allowed Congress to cut taxes five times,", the tax cuts reduced receipts and were followed with the great depression. Note the booming 1990s followed by the tax cuts during the Bush administration, the reduced receipts and, ta da, massive recession on the brink of depression.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for reducing tax burdens but lets not jump to conclusions and assume simply cutting taxes will instil wealth and prosperity into the heartland. In fact to the contrary, the facts show that something else is occurring along with the tax cuts that results in a detrimental affect to the working class and their ability to make a living.
This story should be tagged as a troll story.
First, the documents to which the article links were not written with the intention of convincing U.S. employers to hire students who are non-residents of the United States in place of students who are citizens. Non-resident students are likely no different than any other student in college and need supplemental income to pay for their education. The documents purpose is to enlighten employers about the facts about hiring non-resident students who are in the country on a student visa. Perhaps the author would like to take it one step further and see if they can incite hatred in legal aliens who are here working under a green card as these pamphlets surely must be convincing U.S. employers to hire foreign students studying under a visa in place of legal immigrant workers. Or perhaps not.
Second, if the author bothered to read IRS Publication 519, as the pamphlets suggest, they would have realized that any foreign student studying under a visa in the united states will fall under Social Security and FICA taxes if they are determined to have a substantial presence in the United States.
If a foreign student spends any more time in the U.S. than is necessary to attend school then it is likely they will fall under the substantial presence test and an employer will be required to pay Social Security and FICA taxes for the student they hired. A foreign student who is only available to work a fraction of each year is not a threat to the resident work force or the social services systems paid for by that work force.
As a member of the unemployed I understand the difficulties many people are going through but we can maintain a semblance of intelligence and become informed before making poorly researched rants.
Don't wait for "we", its up to you.
The people who are actually the means of production generating the wealth need to stop over paying the 2% for the products the 98% produced and the 98% need to stop working for wages that are well below what their production is worth to pay the 2%'s wages that are well above what they actually produce.
Easier said than done but it can be done with a lot of pain, paying off debts, cutting expenses, building savings, quitting jobs, refusing employment offers, starting personal businesses, etc.
The only way to stop the 2% is to cut off their supply of revenue and production.
What you are describing is the market before these high frequency trading systems were developed. Everyone has access to the same information, they process it to make a decision on the current and projected value of a stock, and they place orders accordingly. Moving from the ancient floor and telephones to an electronic system with internet brokers increased the speed of the system and the number of players. And these high frequency trading systems do the same thing, but they do something else as well.
1) They use speed and volume to muscle in on traders who have performed their analysis and placed their orders and take a portion of the profits the slower traders may have acquired through their analysis and order. They didn't add liquidity, efficiency or even set the market price, they are simply stepping in between the buyers and sellers and creating multiple unnecessary trades to ensure a portion of the profits from those trades end up in their pockets.
2) And the systems are used to manipulate the pricing of stocks by placing fake orders that are removed before the orders can be acted upon because there was no intent to buy or sell in the first place, just to put some numbers on a board to force a reaction.
What it comes down to is you have a small group that have created a shadow market of orders that most traders never see and the use of systems to place and remove bogus orders on the real market to manipulate prices. I have watched NASDAQ level 2 quotes over the years and it has reached the point where today they are meaningless as the orders you think you see are not a reflection of the true orders hiding in the shadows and you can watch massive blocks of orders appear and vanish for no obvious reason as the stock price changes. In fact, I swear you can sometimes see orders flying back and forth as the high frequency trade systems of competitors wage a cyber trading battle on the open market. NASDAQ is actually paid to provide access to that information and it sure looks like its just a scam at this point.
Actually, based on the articles someone did point out the need for the fix in their licensing and source code release. But I do see your point and I admit that it is quite possible they simply made a mistake and had every intention of following the GPL. However, the reaction of the community should come as no surprise considering Microsoft's historical stance on the GPL and the fact that they didn't simple release the entire driver under the GPL in the first place.
I guess we can chalk one up to lessons learned, they did the right thing, now we should move on.
All the time eh? Citation please.
You may want to click on the links to the articles to see the treachery. Here is a quote from one of the articles...
Pigs are flying low: Why Microsoft open-sourced its Linux drivers
"Microsoft originally was licensing the Linux drivers, also known as the Linux Integration Components (LIC), in a way that was in violation of the GPL. It was offering them under a combination of the GPL and a closed source license."
The whole idea of releasing source code under the GPL is to make it available for use. The copyright holders of that code do not take issue with corporations using the code, they take issue with corporations when they violate the license terms under which the source code is made available to them for use. As was the case with Linksys/Cisco.
Cisco sued by FSF over GPL violation
Very true, I stand corrected. But it is fun to use the same terms against those who have been wailing about stolen IP for years. ;)
The use of the term viral to describe the GPL is meant to attribute the negative connotations of virii to the licensing terms.
A virus spreads, infects and causes disease in an unsuspecting host.
Source code released under the GPL does not spread, infect or disease unsuspecting hosts. Source code licensed under the GPL is used with intent.
The only way the host project could be unsuspecting would be if the source code was acquired and utilized without bothering to perform due diligence to understand the licensing terms which made the source code available. Something that seems very out of character for a multi-billion dollar corporation that continually harps on customers about licensing violations.
If due diligence is not completed and a project unknowingly incorporates GPLed code it still does not spread and infect or disease their proprietary code. The GPLed code can be removed from the project, which rather than removing a virus is more like removing a transplanted organ in keeping with your bodily allegory. Of course once you remove the organ from the body the body likely will die unless you get another organ.
If you violate the terms of the GPL and resolve the issue by removing the open source code from your project there still will be the issue of damages caused by violating the license. The damages and the body missing the organ are likely the reason corporations easily give in to the terms of the GPL, not because it is viral.
Once bitten twice shy.
And the irony, you consider a multi sourced market where the actual producers of the licensed source code retain their copyrigths versus handing it over to a single corporation to be communist, "red", and a single sourced monopoly controlled market to be free market capitalism. And copyright holders protecting their licensed source code are insane, "loons", while a fat ageing corporate officer jumping around on a stage in front of subordinates to the point of causing bodily harm and proceeding to limp around the stage is sanity.
Yeah, there are loons here its just not who you think it is.
Actually it seems they have added weight to their argument that businesses should adhere to the licensing terms for the software they use. Microsoft puts massive resources into fighting violations of their licensing agreements with end users of their products and here they are caught violating the licensing terms for software they have licensed.
So in the end Microsoft should write their own code and refrain from stealing open source code if they have no intention of adhering to the licensing terms that made the open source code available. The GPL is not viral, otherwise they would be releasing ALL of their code under the GPL.
The motive is greed, the objective is monopoly control.
Apple makes money off more than just hardware, they make a killing off software and services as well. It is no secret that many businesses in the United States utilize ethically questionable and often times out right illegal business tactics to establish and maintain monopolies that provide an opportunity for the business to control the market prices of their products rather than the other way around.
None of this is new and Federal legislation was passed to provide the Justice Department with the means to stop this type of activity, note the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Unfortunately there seems to have been a shift in the thinking in the Executive branch and the Department of Justice as one of the most recent and significant cases, the DOJ case against Microsoft, resulted in a slap on the wrist and business as usual to this day.
Don't sweat it too much. Red Hat's product line is the Red Hat Network, not linux. Microsoft could buy up Red Hat and destroy their support business but they would simply be replaced by another support vendor, either an up start or an existing vendor, i.e. Oracle, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Novell, etc.
You seem to be new to linux so I'll explain it. The $80 is a subscription to the Red Hat Network support service, it is not a purchase price for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
In fact there have been multiple distribution forks/clones created from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source files. You download the source files, remove the Red Hat trade marks and logos, compile and distribute. :)
So with that bit of knowledge under your belt you can now intelligently discuss Red Hat's position in the F/OSS community and join the rest of us in celebrating this acknowledgement of Red Hat's business success based on open source.