For the past 42 minutes, the number of posts to this article stood at "66 out of 90". I got logged out automatically, and couldn't post or do anything during this period.
I did something crazy - went to news.google.com and tried to search for "Microsoft Slashdot Oregon" and got this:
Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration Slashdot - 1 hour ago... hear quite a bit about the horrible shape Oregon... fact that this pending bill gets attention on Slashdot will only force Microsoft... The open source...
with the link: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/06/18152 39.shtm l?tid=103
And I think your post is a reply to a redundant post! Here's my suggestion to give some real TEETH to the law.. Closed Source software must be considered IF and ONLY IF open-source alternatives which satisfy the stated needs of the govt. agencies don't exist. Any agency in wilful violation of this legislation will be penalised... and the penalty terms could be laid down.
The fact of the matter is that Open Source is a special category of software and needs legislation. It's like an endangered species - it cannot sustain itself without public awareness and legal protection. It is highly useful though.
" The consideration for open source should already be included in the basic law that all state departments should spend taxpayer resources in a way that would benefit the taxpayer most."
Exactly how will this help in benefitting the taxpayer? In the matter of H1Bs, the legislation was specifically phrased "foreigners may be employed ONLY WHERE such talent is not locally avbl". Only a similar strong wording can promote Open Source.
I'd like a legislation which states "Agencies which consider software purchases must consider commercial closed-source s/w ONLY WHERE Open Source products satisfying the needs, are not available". The penalty for non-conformance to this legislation should be the loss of the taxpayer's money i.e. the (extra) price paid for closed-source s/w.
The problem with society is there is no legislation against apathy and stupidity.
Since the phones are proprietary, I'd imagine the auth. to happen via a handshake to the Enterprise router that handles the traffic - obviously that'd be Cisco too.
is Palm planning to port WinCE or Pocket PC OS on those cute little things? BTW, a Palmtop with 128MB RAM should be quite fast - like say, aLinux desktop with 1GB RAM..
"It might not be a bad idea to write some sort of redirection "
Nice idea! Any reference to FireBird SQL sites using the Firebird Browser should be redirected to: microsoft.com? slashdot.org/this_debate? mozilla.org? Any other ideas welcome.
Absolutely! Actually AOL should keep this debate simmering for about 23 days - until the shock and awe is gone. They should reluctantly change the name at the end of it all, should get enough publicity.
Contrary to earlier perception, this debate is actually doing a lot of good to Open Source stuff - keep it up.
Your logic only applies if you're an alleged criminal and I'm a prosecutor! In a debate, when you make an assertion, you got to back it up with facts, reliable estimates, study reports (unsponsored, I might add) or relevant data. Just throwing out some piece of statistic which is being bandied about by the big guns, to deflect attention, will not do.
Consider some facts: 1. Most spam is for products and services (if you can call them so) based in the US. 2. Spam needs bandwidth to travel, and lots of it. More than 70% of the internet bandwidth is within the US. Makes it almost impossible for 95% of the spam to come in from outside. 3. Receiving spam yields no direct revenue for the ISPs concerned. Do you believe US based ISPs passively receive and service 95% of spam traffic for nothing? Think again, and more calmly.
" 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S" This is a myth. I'm inclined to believe that 95% of the spam which APPEARS to originate from outside the US, actually has origins within the US.
There is NO evidence in recorded history to suggest that the US suffers in silence due to problems originating outside. I challenge you to prove me wrong.
"Microsoft loses money on every XBox sold and only makes a profit from you if you buy more than four or five games over the life of the system."
I find this assumption highly questionable. Profit and Loss are complex to determine, especially with intangible commodities around. Consider the foll. items under profit and loss for the XBox:
Profits: 1. Every XBox sold adds to the installed base and is a potential for upgrades and service. 2. Free testing of the security and robustness of the system by the user-base. 3. Access to workarounds, cracks, mod-chips and 'other' games on the XBox - avbl in the market. 4. Time lost by/.ers, OpenSousce folks and others debating about the XBox - priceless!:-) 5. Delays to Open Source projects caused by distracted and otherwise talented gamers:-)
Losses (dubious): 1. A questionable and meagre loss on the sale of the hardware.
"you could write a game, or any other kind of application, and have it run on an xbox without any kind of licensing from Microsoft."
If I had that much intelligence, I wouldn't be playing those games myself, I'd probably do it for fun on my own XBox (DMCA and MS don't apply) or for money. How many good programmers do you know who spend their time on frivolous things like games? People who write code, including game code, are generally introvert and their primary motivation is to sell the code for money.
With the DMCA around, selling games written for the XBox isn't an easy task, and I don't see it as a big motivation - MS threats or silence notwithstanding.
" MS is specifically doing NOTHING in this matter, yet it is all an MS ploy to sell more XBox consoles"
Why is this difficult to u'stand? A company which threatens and files lawsuits against 'perceived' competitors such as Lindows, a co. that uses its monopoly all it can to expand it's server markets, a co. which promotes it's proprietary Media Player with draconian licensing terms is DOING NOTHING TO STOP XBox LINUX!!
Why? Let MS come clean and say, we will NEVER use DMCA against the XBox hackers - on record. Recently, there was a story of a student Lance getting CDs of Visual Studio.Net, with a warning message that using it w/o license was illegal! Subsequently, MS wrote him a letter saying the license was a click-thru on the install screen!
Why this subterfuge? What about all the other students then? They did't get any letters from MS, did they? IMHO, until MS goes on record and says they wouldn't use DMCA against XBox hackers/reverse-engineers/modders, this whole exercise is fruitless.
As I said above, you can get a decent PC for $200 with Linux, and these hackers can put their skills to better use over there.
This whole affair about XBox, Security, DMCA, Linux-on-the-XBox and stories about how MS is losing money n the XBox.... is this all a big ploy by MS to somehow generate interest on the XBox? I mean, is the XBox not selling well as a gaming platform, which is what it's supposed to be anyway?
Why fiddle around with a $200 XBox and load Linux on it after circumventing a 100 security holes, when a Linux PC can be had for the same price on Walmart?
How many of us can afford an XBox but not a separate PC? Even if somehow it's possible to load Linux on an XBox and attach a CD writer, USB mouse, kbd etc., is it still worth the trouble?
The more I read such articles, the more I get the feeling MS is DESPARATE to sell these XBoxen. Does the/. crowd think that anything done against the DMCA is a worthy pursuit? Sharing files maybe, reverse engineering maybe, but Linux on the XBox - certainly not for me.
What if they chose medium sized spammers and left out the big ones on purpose? As many have pointed out, AOL themselves are spammers... recently MS argued AGAINST (!!) tough penalties for spammers; makes you wonder if AOL would sue MS.
This whole spam thing seems to me a long drawn process of killing the medium sized gorillas and forming an unholy association of the larger ones. To top it all, there's a big spin on spam originating outside the US!
Mr. von Lohman's article has more holes than a Service Pack - as Rudy suggests, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking. Some points from his article:
" Suing college students. Forcing ISPs to rat out customers."
Both the ISPs nor the R*AA consider netizens as Consumers, not Customers. Big difference.
"Petitioning Congress for unprecedented vigilante powers....and a rather lengthy list of draconian measures... None of these efforts by the recording industry has put a single nickel into the pockets of a musician... And none of these efforts has slowed the spread of peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing."
There is no connection between P2P and paying musicians. All these efforts are by the R*AA and their agenda is to increase their profits, not enriching musicians.
"More Americans have used file-sharing software than voted for the President."
What's the point here? People are apathetic to politics, but they are passionate about sharing files..
"Responding to pressure from the entertainment industry, the University of Wyoming is now monitoring... cadets have been disciplined...Investment in innovative P2P companies has dried up." None of the above is due to file sharing per se.
"Some members of Congress.. have suggested that the answer might be to expel, or even jail, college students." This ought to be condemned directly, rather than tax ALL internet users.
" The hysteria over P2P has gotten out of hand. " And OTOH, such articles are contributing to the hysteria!
" The problem is that artists are not getting paid. It is time to address the problem." And that is not being addressed directly by anyone.
"The right answer is obvious: We need to collect a pool of money from Internet users" This is a gem! Who is 'We'?? Internet users? RIAA? The govt? The artists? And how can collecting money be a right answer when the problem is one improper distribution of already collected money?
The rest of Mr. Von's article is so full of wishful and Utopian thinking, one wonders how it made to Slashdot!
If such thinking goes on in the EFF, then the FSF would shortly collect money from GNU and Open Source users to pay programmers! And the most 'popular' and 'numerous' programmers wouldn't have written a line of code! Absurd proposal, IMHO.
My internal parser core dumped while reading the article, so I fiddled around a bit, replacing some words and names here and there...
"If you don't know (Bill Gates) you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect (by switching from the Mac to the Windows PC).
He (Bill Gates) was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments (besides COM,.Net, Internet, WiFi, USB..).
He is a well known (command-prompt) and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos (which he gave during the anti-trust trial) is his thing too."... ah! now it all begins to make sense.
Actually, this is a long-time problem with Slashdot on Mozilla and a few other open-source browsers. The grand-parent probably just pushed the Send button, without changing the HTML-formatted setting to Plain-Old-Text.
Funny, I find your post marked funny...and not insightful. I'd have hoped someone at Slashdot would've changed the code by now.
OK- I'm changing this to Plain-Old-Text now..hopefully you'll see 3 neat paras in this universe.
First it was the turn of Palladium to be rebranded as The-Next-Generation-Secure-Computing-Services or some such. And now TCPA has been replaced by TCC! So the original TCPA/Palladium FAQ will become invalid, all the Slashdot debates on evil Palladium will be ir-relevant.
Is this a new strategy? 1. Announce something evil. Give it a name. 2. Educate consumers about what it does. 3. Debate the pros and cons in fiery fora. 4. Modify the name/acronymn a bit, and ram the same evil stuff!
I've read this list 10 times - I can't find Slashdot in it!! I'd trust/. more than all the other promoters, contributors and adopters combined. Maybe/. is actively boycotting this committee??
The opposite of Intel Hate is not AMD Love.... sometime back, Sanders - the chief of AMD, I believe, testified in support of MS in the anti-trust case. It was linked to the MS support of AMD's Hammer CPU, if I remember.
Intel's recent antics with the Centrino also point to darker designs. I'd rather prefer Intel had competition from Via, Cyrix etc. than from an unreliable AMD.
You left out Slashdot...
Model Rocketry:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/131825 9&mode=nested&tid=159
Personal submarines:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/24/192425 7&tid=126
And lots more,... encryption, reverse-engineering, missile tracking, even tossing batter!
Slashdot Mirror
For the past 42 minutes, the number of posts to this article stood at "66 out of 90". I got logged out automatically, and couldn't post or do anything during this period.
... hear quite a bit about the horrible shape Oregon ... fact that this pending bill gets ... The open source ...
2 39.shtm l?tid=103
I did something crazy - went to news.google.com and tried to search for "Microsoft Slashdot Oregon" and got this:
Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration
Slashdot - 1 hour ago
attention on Slashdot will only force Microsoft
with the link:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/06/1815
which is not 1 hour ago, but actually March 6th!
Very curious.
"I think that the law is -1 redundant."
And I think your post is a reply to a redundant post! Here's my suggestion to give some real TEETH to the law.. Closed Source software must be considered IF and ONLY IF open-source alternatives which satisfy the stated needs of the govt. agencies don't exist. Any agency in wilful violation of this legislation will be penalised... and the penalty terms could be laid down.
The fact of the matter is that Open Source is a special category of software and needs legislation. It's like an endangered species - it cannot sustain itself without public awareness and legal protection. It is highly useful though.
" The consideration for open source should already be included in the basic law that all state departments should spend taxpayer resources in a way that would benefit the taxpayer most."
Exactly how will this help in benefitting the taxpayer? In the matter of H1Bs, the legislation was specifically phrased "foreigners may be employed ONLY WHERE such talent is not locally avbl". Only a similar strong wording can promote Open Source.
I'd like a legislation which states "Agencies which consider software purchases must consider commercial closed-source s/w ONLY WHERE Open Source products satisfying the needs, are not available". The penalty for non-conformance to this legislation should be the loss of the taxpayer's money i.e. the (extra) price paid for closed-source s/w.
The problem with society is there is no legislation against apathy and stupidity.
Since the phones are proprietary, I'd imagine the auth. to happen via a handshake to the Enterprise router that handles the traffic - obviously that'd be Cisco too.
is Palm planning to port WinCE or Pocket PC OS on those cute little things? BTW, a Palmtop with 128MB RAM should be quite fast - like say, aLinux desktop with 1GB RAM..
"It might not be a bad idea to write some sort of redirection "
Nice idea! Any reference to FireBird SQL sites using the Firebird Browser should be redirected to:
microsoft.com? slashdot.org/this_debate? mozilla.org? Any other ideas welcome.
Absolutely! Actually AOL should keep this debate simmering for about 23 days - until the shock and awe is gone. They should reluctantly change the name at the end of it all, should get enough publicity.
Contrary to earlier perception, this debate is actually doing a lot of good to Open Source stuff - keep it up.
It's more difficult to reply to a funny post than an insightful or interesting one!
Funny.
Could this have helped our journos who covered the recent war? Maybe we could've watched it on the internet in almost real time?
I'd rather expect to get a Windows version.
"YOU prove ME wrong."
Your logic only applies if you're an alleged criminal and I'm a prosecutor! In a debate, when you make an assertion, you got to back it up with facts, reliable estimates, study reports (unsponsored, I might add) or relevant data.
Just throwing out some piece of statistic which is being bandied about by the big guns, to deflect attention, will not do.
Consider some facts:
1. Most spam is for products and services (if you can call them so) based in the US.
2. Spam needs bandwidth to travel, and lots of it. More than 70% of the internet bandwidth is within the US. Makes it almost impossible for 95% of the spam to come in from outside.
3. Receiving spam yields no direct revenue for the ISPs concerned. Do you believe US based ISPs passively receive and service 95% of spam traffic for nothing? Think again, and more calmly.
" 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S"
This is a myth. I'm inclined to believe that 95% of the spam which APPEARS to originate from outside the US, actually has origins within the US.
There is NO evidence in recorded history to suggest that the US suffers in silence due to problems originating outside. I challenge you to prove me wrong.
Most spam I get is of the 'down, under' category :-). Incidentally, is hotmail banned Down Under? How else can they outlaw spam?
"Microsoft loses money on every XBox sold and only makes a profit from you if you buy more than four or five games over the life of the system."
/.ers, OpenSousce folks and others debating about the XBox - priceless! :-) :-)
I find this assumption highly questionable. Profit and Loss are complex to determine, especially with intangible commodities around. Consider the foll. items under profit and loss for the XBox:
Profits:
1. Every XBox sold adds to the installed base and is a potential for upgrades and service.
2. Free testing of the security and robustness of the system by the user-base.
3. Access to workarounds, cracks, mod-chips and 'other' games on the XBox - avbl in the market.
4. Time lost by
5. Delays to Open Source projects caused by distracted and otherwise talented gamers
Losses (dubious):
1. A questionable and meagre loss on the sale of the hardware.
The profits far outweigh the losses, IMO.
"you could write a game, or any other kind of application, and have it run on an xbox without any kind of licensing from Microsoft."
If I had that much intelligence, I wouldn't be playing those games myself, I'd probably do it for fun on my own XBox (DMCA and MS don't apply) or for money. How many good programmers do you know who spend their time on frivolous things like games? People who write code, including game code, are generally introvert and their primary motivation is to sell the code for money.
With the DMCA around, selling games written for the XBox isn't an easy task, and I don't see it as a big motivation - MS threats or silence notwithstanding.
" MS is specifically doing NOTHING in this matter, yet it is all an MS ploy to sell more XBox consoles"
.Net, with a warning message that using it w/o license was illegal! Subsequently, MS wrote him a letter saying the license was a click-thru on the install screen!
6 21 0&mode=nested&tid=109
Why is this difficult to u'stand? A company which threatens and files lawsuits against 'perceived' competitors such as Lindows, a co. that uses its monopoly all it can to expand it's server markets, a co. which promotes it's proprietary Media Player with draconian licensing terms is DOING NOTHING TO STOP XBox LINUX!!
Why? Let MS come clean and say, we will NEVER use DMCA against the XBox hackers - on record. Recently, there was a story of a student Lance getting CDs of Visual Studio
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/05/214
Why this subterfuge? What about all the other students then? They did't get any letters from MS, did they? IMHO, until MS goes on record and says they wouldn't use DMCA against XBox hackers/reverse-engineers/modders, this whole exercise is fruitless.
As I said above, you can get a decent PC for $200 with Linux, and these hackers can put their skills to better use over there.
This whole affair about XBox, Security, DMCA, Linux-on-the-XBox and stories about how MS is losing money n the XBox.... is this all a big ploy by MS to somehow generate interest on the XBox? I mean, is the XBox not selling well as a gaming platform, which is what it's supposed to be anyway?
/. crowd think that anything done against the DMCA is a worthy pursuit? Sharing files maybe, reverse engineering maybe, but Linux on the XBox - certainly not for me.
Why fiddle around with a $200 XBox and load Linux on it after circumventing a 100 security holes, when a Linux PC can be had for the same price on Walmart?
How many of us can afford an XBox but not a separate PC? Even if somehow it's possible to load Linux on an XBox and attach a CD writer, USB mouse, kbd etc., is it still worth the trouble?
The more I read such articles, the more I get the feeling MS is DESPARATE to sell these XBoxen. Does the
What if they chose medium sized spammers and left out the big ones on purpose? As many have pointed out, AOL themselves are spammers... recently MS argued AGAINST (!!) tough penalties for spammers; makes you wonder if AOL would sue MS.
This whole spam thing seems to me a long drawn process of killing the medium sized gorillas and forming an unholy association of the larger ones. To top it all, there's a big spin on spam originating outside the US!
Mr. von Lohman's article has more holes than a Service Pack - as Rudy suggests, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking. Some points from his article:
...and a rather lengthy list of draconian measures... None of these efforts by the recording industry has put a single nickel into the pockets of a musician... And none of these efforts has slowed the spread of peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing."
... cadets have been disciplined ...Investment in innovative P2P companies has dried up."
" Suing college students. Forcing ISPs to rat out customers."
Both the ISPs nor the R*AA consider netizens as Consumers, not Customers. Big difference.
"Petitioning Congress for unprecedented vigilante powers.
There is no connection between P2P and paying musicians. All these efforts are by the R*AA and their agenda is to increase their profits, not enriching musicians.
"More Americans have used file-sharing software than voted for the President."
What's the point here? People are apathetic to politics, but they are passionate about sharing files..
"Responding to pressure from the entertainment industry, the University of Wyoming is now monitoring
None of the above is due to file sharing per se.
"Some members of Congress.. have suggested that the answer might be to expel, or even jail, college students."
This ought to be condemned directly, rather than tax ALL internet users.
" The hysteria over P2P has gotten out of hand. "
And OTOH, such articles are contributing to the hysteria!
" The problem is that artists are not getting paid. It is time to address the problem."
And that is not being addressed directly by anyone.
"The right answer is obvious: We need to collect a pool of money from Internet users"
This is a gem! Who is 'We'?? Internet users? RIAA? The govt? The artists?
And how can collecting money be a right answer when the problem is one improper distribution of already collected money?
The rest of Mr. Von's article is so full of wishful and Utopian thinking, one wonders how it made to Slashdot!
If such thinking goes on in the EFF, then the FSF would shortly collect money from GNU and Open Source users to pay programmers! And the most 'popular' and 'numerous' programmers wouldn't have written a line of code! Absurd proposal, IMHO.
My internal parser core dumped while reading the article, so I fiddled around a bit, replacing some words and names here and there...
.Net, Internet, WiFi, USB..).
... ah! now it all begins to make sense.
"If you don't know (Bill Gates) you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect (by switching from the Mac to the Windows PC).
He (Bill Gates) was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments (besides COM,
He is a well known (command-prompt) and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos (which he gave during the anti-trust trial) is his thing too."
Actually, this is a long-time problem with Slashdot on Mozilla and a few other open-source browsers. The grand-parent probably just pushed the Send button, without changing the HTML-formatted setting to Plain-Old-Text.
Funny, I find your post marked funny...and not insightful. I'd have hoped someone at Slashdot would've changed the code by now.
OK- I'm changing this to Plain-Old-Text now..hopefully you'll see 3 neat paras in this universe.
First it was the turn of Palladium to be rebranded as The-Next-Generation-Secure-Computing-Services or some such. And now TCPA has been replaced by TCC! So the original TCPA/Palladium FAQ will become invalid, all the Slashdot debates on evil Palladium will be ir-relevant.
Is this a new strategy?
1. Announce something evil. Give it a name.
2. Educate consumers about what it does.
3. Debate the pros and cons in fiery fora.
4. Modify the name/acronymn a bit, and ram the same evil stuff!
Seems to be working.
I've read this list 10 times - I can't find Slashdot in it!! I'd trust /. more than all the other promoters, contributors and adopters combined. Maybe /. is actively boycotting this committee??
The opposite of Intel Hate is not AMD Love.... sometime back, Sanders - the chief of AMD, I believe, testified in support of MS in the anti-trust case. It was linked to the MS support of AMD's Hammer CPU, if I remember.
Intel's recent antics with the Centrino also point to darker designs. I'd rather prefer Intel had competition from Via, Cyrix etc. than from an unreliable AMD.
You left out Slashdot... Model Rocketry: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/131825 9&mode=nested&tid=159
Personal submarines:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/24/192425 7&tid=126
And lots more ,... encryption, reverse-engineering, missile tracking, even tossing batter!