Unless the law specified dstribution of *machine readable* malicious code (ie
binaries) then MS et.al. could start nailing those who post proof-of-concept code to
demonstrate the flavor of the week exploit in IIS or WinxP or what have you...
But they would never let this happen
in the first place.
Otherwise, they won't be able to distribute
IIS or WinxP or what have you...
Re:Solution: XP behind a firewall?
on
XP, Phone Home
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Could not a great deal of these 'features' (annoyances, security holes etc.) be
circumvented by keeping a very restrictive firewall between any machines running XP
(or any Microsoft OS) and the Internet at large?
Yes, I can see the slogan already:
Microsoft Windows XP:
The most secure system ever built!*
(*If kept behind an OpenBSD firewall)
I can also hear a customer
buying a computer asking:
- So, you say that 3GHz and 2GB RAM
with 200GB HDD is enough
to send emails to my grandchildren
on every X-mas? I hope you're right.
But will my new computer be also secure
against those evil hacker pirates
we lately hear so much about?
- Of course, madam!
Just make sure to insert a very restrictive firewall between your computer and the Internet.
It's not that Microsoft's trajectory has necessarily passed its apex, it's that websites
like slashdot focus more attention on pointing out Microsoft's missteps.
Hey, thanks a lot!
Couldn't you say it before
I told all people I know to
sell MSFT stock and
watch the evening news tonight
to see how
the Great Microsoft Pyramid is finally collapsing?
Every discussion about
Windows not being modular or about
impossibility of removing different
Windows components
should start by visiting
98lite.net.
Didn't anyone mention about it in the court
when Microsoft showed the fake presentation
on how IE is the key element of OS?
For my high school senior project I wrote a Java program that made specific searches
on google, and parsed the results. I spent 3/4 of my time perfecting the nasty string
manipulation to strip out the HTML and isolate indivisual results, urls, etc. in my own
databse.
I think your high school programming teacher
was one of those Java programmers with a sense of humor.
There are languages where you just have to write one line, and this is only when you want to reinvent
the wheel.
m|^<p><a href="?([^">]+)"?>(.+?)</a>|
and print "$2\n$1\n\n" while <>;
Those Java programmers really does have
a sense of humor...
Or maybe he was one of those
CIPA guys, because
if you had used Perl, you would have spent
3/4 of your time watching pr0n.
Redundant?!
*Please*
answer and tell me how the hell was it redundant
while 95 minutes later
a comment
duplicating a subset of
mine
was suddenly interesting.
Oh, I get it, you mean redundant in a sense,
that others said the same later?
I see, it is redundant
for some reversed definition of redundancy.
I don't care about the stupid karma,
but I do care about people reading
and replying to my comments.
Now I have karma 50 again,
thanks to my other post,
so you can safely
mod my post up
as +2 informative, +1 insightful and +1 interesting, not being affraid that I might
get some karma.
Thank you for your attention.
I'm sure no one will read it now with
Score: 1.
Of course I'm
currently not eligible to Meta Moderate
so I can't even complain.
Re:This is the beginning of the revolution
on
Google to Offer API
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, but shouldn't those modules be re-written, or at least patched, every time
Google decides to change the HTML format of the result page?
I don't remember any major HTML
change since I started using
Google few years ago. See the
WWW::Search::Google
change log, I thing that about
one minor HTML change per year is not much.
I think that accessing the results using a standard API would be much better.
I didn't say it's not better, of course it is.
I just said it's not any revolution.
People could write their own programs
searching Google using WWW::Search::Google
since 1999, and before that
using just a simple regex.
To demonstrate that it's
not a rocket sciense to parse Google results,
I just wrote this quick and dirty, nasty hack
in the command line:
shiny@c10:~$
GET -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla' http://www.google.com/search?q=perl | perl -ne 'print "$2\n$1\n\n" if
m|^<p>\s*<a href="?([^">]+)"?>(.+?)</a>|i'
| sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' >
perl-links.txt
(it's all in one line)
And this is what I have in my new
perl-links.txt file:
Perl.com: The Source for Perl -- perl development, perl...
http://www.perl.com/
www.perl.com/perl/
http://www.perl.com/perl/
Perl Mongers
http://www.perl.org/
CPAN
http://www.cpan.org/
et cetera...
In 180-character command line I wrote a Google
frontend, and the parser itself takes only 75 characters including "perl -ne", so it's a real one-liner.
I'm sure I could optimize the whole damned thing
to less than 100 characters.
But why the hell I'm writing this?!
I must be very tired...
I guess, my point is, that
I don't need no stinkin API!
(Note to self:
must decrease daily
1,3,7-trimethylxanthine dose below LD50
as soon as possible)
I am sick of getting HTML spam that automatically starts banging on my net
connection, even before I get chance to blacklist the appropriate site through
Junkbuster.
and your client loads this image,
they know someone is reading their spam
at your address and they can log that your
address is worth spamming, for future spam
or selling it to other spammers.
So your stolen bandwidth is actually
a little problem, automatically rendering
html email has much more serious problems
than wasting the bandwidth.
It's like a return receipt request
which you can't ignore.
A return receipt which is not sent
by email but directly through tcp/ip,
so the email sender knows your
geographical location, your ISP, etc.
As you can see, it's already possible to use
lots of different
search engines in your own scripts.
Of cource it's great news about Google API,
but I wouldn't exactly call it a revolution.
You could write a dozen of your scripts
a very long time ago.
Wasn't someone working on embedding a Perl interpreter in the Linux kernel a while
ago? And/or rewriting all of/bin as Perl scripts using the kernel-based interpreter?
I haven't ever heard about it, until I read your
comment.
After a quick Google searching I found some info
about it.
It started, as so many of these things do, with one of those interminable debates between programmers. You know
what I mean. They usually end up with one party shouting something like "Well, fine, I don't care if it's impossible, I'm
going to do it anyway!"
This time around, it was me, and the topic in question was an operating system user-space comprised of non-GNU
components. An operating system consists of two components: the kernel, like Windows or Linux, which talks to the
hardware and directs the action, and the user-space, which is all the programs that you see and use: a shell, Explorer,
programs to list directories, move files, read your mail, play games, and so on.
On "free" operating systems, a sizeable proportion of the essential user-space - not the really high-level things like
web browsers, but the basic stuff that gets the system up and running - comes from the GNU project, and it was
these programs that I wanted to replace.
Don't get me wrong. This wasn't an anti-GNU jihad. But someone had told me it wasn't possible, which was precisely
the incentive I needed to get stuck into an idea I'd had a while ago.
Any sensible person would use BSD code here -- the BSD project derived their utilities from de-commercialized
sources of Unix, and evolved independently of GNU. But that would be easy. And it wouldn't be fun. If you're going
to prove a point, do it with style. So I was going to do it with Perl.
[...]
Simon Cozens also writes about
Gregor Purdy's
Perl Shell (psh)
-
"The Perl Shell is a shell that combines the interactive nature of a Unix shell with the power of Perl. The goal is to eventually have a full featured shell
that behaves as expected for normal shell activity. But, the Perl Shell will use Perl syntax and functionality for control-flow statements and other things."
-
and about
Claudio Calvelli's
Linux filesystem written in Perl
(PerlFS),
but the link is dead and I couldn't find the new PerlFS
home page (anyone knows it?).
Perlix is to be an POSIX compliant operating system based on the more graceful language of
Perl, in stead of the uglier C. This specific project is to make a kernel written in Perl, and
other core components for this operating system
Posted By: rydor
Date: 2001-08-05 14:19
Summary: Ok, the deal with perlix
For one thing, work has not yet really begun on the perlix kernel, at
most it's been in speculation. The main thing, is that this project really
needs Perl6 to go ahead. Also, is needed (i don't really know if Perl6 will
allow it) is direct memory writing via perl. If anyone wants to hack it into
Perl 5, that would be great. One thing that may be very helpful, is to
load Perl into system memory. From there Perl should run fast enough
on a more high end computer to support a kernel. Another thing that
has been thought about is since a Perl kernel would be relatively dynamic,
have on the fly kernel upgrades, via a special script to be written. So if
you want to swap in a new network driver that works better, you use
this script, and the script would somehow through that driver in quickly.
Anyway, If anyone is interested in joining for planning this out, either
email me at Rydor@dahab.com or post to the board here, but posting to
that board will probably take me a lot longer to figure out that you've
done so. Anyway, hopefully we can get this figured out enough to get
off the ground, and I hope the project will be lots of fun.
The first order of business is to make a bootable Perl kernel. Basically, this will
consist of the Perl 4 core components being hacked into a state whereby it can be
loaded into memory after booting and executed. In the initial stages, any Perl code
to be executed will be stored as a string and handed to the interpreter module. In
later stages, the Perl code will be executed from an arbitrary memory buffer.
Making the Perl 4 core components bootable is easier said than done. A
memory-management system will have to be created to replace that found in a standard
Unix system. As well, any dependency on the I/O subsystem will have to be removed or
replaced.
I am basing the initial design on Perl 4 because the source code is far easier to
understand and modify. Perl 4 does not contain many oddities currently found in the
Perl 5 runtime (such as OOP and macro-hell).
[...]
It sounds very interesting
and I'm going to find out more about
the current stage of Perlix/PerlOS
development (if any).
If anyone knows something interesting,
please let us know.
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which supporters view as the government's best
shot yet at reining in online smut, requires public libraries to install filtering software on all
computers or lose federal technology funding.
Kinda ironic acronym for
Children's Internet Protection Act,
fighting for censorship of porn.
I mean,
if I had something like this in Poland,
I wouldn't be able to read about CIPA!
I think that if you want to censor offensive
informations, you shouldn't choose a name
which is itself offensive in different language,
unless you want to be censored as well...
Children's Internet Protection Act
- it's the funniest thing I read today!
Thank you CIPA, you made my day!
Maybe I am not understanding the finer details of this discussion, and please help
clarify the issue for me, but if someone takes some code that is GPL'ed and doesn't
agree with the license, can that person than disregard the license and use the software
anyone they seem fit?
Yes,
in a sense that most of people
think while they say about
using the software.
That person can
only use the software,
which doesn't include
copying, distribution and modification.
But still you can use the software
in the same way as a
legally purchased copy of Microsoft Windows,
in fact, even more freely,
since you don't have to accept Windows EULA.
So in practice the GPL doesn't
mean anything to the end user
(GPL in not EULA - End User License Agreement),
you don't have to accept it.
But if you want to distribute
or modify the software,
you don't have anything which
would give you any right to do it unless you
accept GPL.
If you don't accept the GPL,
all you have is the
standard copyright law, which
doesn't give you those rights.
So you can't copy or change the software and say that you haven't accepted the GPL,
because the law prohibits copying
and making modifications in the first place.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND
MODIFICATION
0. [...]
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are
outside its scope.
The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is
covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made
by running the Program). [...]
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants
you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited
by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any
work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and
conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
Many people don't know that,
I hope it's clear now.
Section 1.6 [...]
indicates you can't implement CIFS without a license for those patents. The
"Royalty-Free CIFS Technical Reference License Agreement" is the patent license,
but it has an anti-GPL clause, and nothing else licenses you the patents.
So the patents make it complicated...
I haven't thought about patents here,
so I thought it would be solved if someone
just rewrites those specs, something like
OT III - Scientologys "secret"
course rewritten for beginners.
But fortunately,
once again,
software patents saved the day!
It's an antimatter version of the GPL, like a GPL from the parallel Star Trek universe
where everyone was evil.
The whole thing starts to look
really nasty...
I wonder what will be the
free software community riposte.
Instead of the GPL, just use the BSD license. That will let free software interoperate
with Windows, allow you to get the documentation needed for the project, and keep
MS off your back.
1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that
requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form;
(b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
If they don't read the document, they're not bound to the license, and can still reverse
engineer it, right?
Even reading the licence doesn't mean
you accept it.
Usually you have to accept the license,
because nothing else gives you right to use
or copy the software.
But here,
I can accept the license and use the software
and you can probe by computer
and reverse engineer it.
You don't need to accept the license,
because you don't need any rights which
you otherwise wouldn't have.
Disclaimer: I'm ANAL and this is my
illegal advice.
Bottom line, its two different cultures. To get them to work together requires efforts
and respect on both sides.
That is why
Dr. John M. Ivancevich
and Dr. Thomas N. Duening,
the authors of
"Managing Einsteins",
are writing their next book
entitled "Working for Rockefellers".
I think I'll write something like
this in my resume:
Some people may tell you that I'm insane
or that I lost contact with reality long
time ago and
I have problems with human-human
relationships since I was a kid,
but don't believe them,
that's not true.
By the way,
please
read the book "Managing Einsteins"
before contacting me, thank you.
I'm expressing reservations about picking one word as a slogan and wielding it as a
weapon until you lose sight of the fact that the word isn't as important as the rich
plethora of ideas behind it.
Freedom was always the most important priority
for the free software folks,
from 1983 when Richard Stallman announced
the GNU Project, to now.
In 1998 the OSI launch was announced
by Eric S. Raymond, because he
"realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been
associated with free software
in the past and sell the idea
strictly on the same
pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape."
My point is that if you don't like FSF
because they're
"picking one word [freedom]
as a slogan
and wielding it as a weapon",
than just join the OSI
and be happy, instead of complaining
about FSF having different attitude than OSI
(which is quite obvious,
otherwise the OSI would have not been founded).
You're not going to convince GNU people
to stop talking about freedom after 20 years
(ESR knew that 4 years ago).
If I have a complaint, it's that people draw a distinction between FSF and OSI based on
nitpicking over why "free" is different to "open", when the basic concepts are pretty
much interchangeable.
How can people not draw a
distinction between FSF and
OSI based on free/open difference,
if that distinction is the very reason
why OSI has been started?
Those definitions
(and the motivations behind using them)
are the main difference between
FSF and OSI.
That is why free software and
open source software can cooperate so well.
I use, write and promote free software,
not only because I like high quality software,
but because I like freedom in the first place.
For me the high quality
is a very nice side effect,
but not the whole purpose.
People who use, write and promote
open source software, put the quality and
practical advantages over
the ideological and ethical aspects.
We all can work together,
because it's usually the same software
released under
the same licenses.
Uh, I count 31 instances of "free" or "freedom" in that interview. [...] Perhaps
the FSF could consider coming up with a new angle. [...] There are other words,
and other concepts that represent the FSF's ideals. Open. Shared. Community.
Perhaps we could embroider some of those words onto our flag for a while, just
until the Freedom Fad blows over.
Is anyone using any critical thinking? How can a particular combination of bits on a
CD crash your computer, much less "cause damage to your computer"?
I used to think exactly the same,
until
one CD
proved me wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
But they would never let this happen in the first place. Otherwise, they won't be able to distribute IIS or WinxP or what have you...
Perl 6 is what I bet on.
Yes, I can see the slogan already:
Microsoft Windows XP: The most secure system ever built!*
(*If kept behind an OpenBSD firewall)
I can also hear a customer buying a computer asking:
And the problem is solved!
Hey, thanks a lot! Couldn't you say it before I told all people I know to sell MSFT stock and watch the evening news tonight to see how the Great Microsoft Pyramid is finally collapsing?
Every discussion about Windows not being modular or about impossibility of removing different Windows components should start by visiting 98lite.net. Didn't anyone mention about it in the court when Microsoft showed the fake presentation on how IE is the key element of OS?
I think your high school programming teacher was one of those Java programmers with a sense of humor. There are languages where you just have to write one line, and this is only when you want to reinvent the wheel.
m|^<p><a href="?([^">]+)"?>(.+?)</a>| and print "$2\n$1\n\n" while <>;
Those Java programmers really does have a sense of humor... Or maybe he was one of those CIPA guys, because if you had used Perl, you would have spent 3/4 of your time watching pr0n.
Redundant?! *Please* answer and tell me how the hell was it redundant while 95 minutes later a comment duplicating a subset of mine was suddenly interesting. Oh, I get it, you mean redundant in a sense, that others said the same later? I see, it is redundant for some reversed definition of redundancy.
I don't care about the stupid karma, but I do care about people reading and replying to my comments. Now I have karma 50 again, thanks to my other post, so you can safely mod my post up as +2 informative, +1 insightful and +1 interesting, not being affraid that I might get some karma. Thank you for your attention. I'm sure no one will read it now with Score: 1. Of course I'm currently not eligible to Meta Moderate so I can't even complain.
I don't remember any major HTML change since I started using Google few years ago. See the WWW::Search::Google change log, I thing that about one minor HTML change per year is not much.
I didn't say it's not better, of course it is. I just said it's not any revolution. People could write their own programs searching Google using WWW::Search::Google since 1999, and before that using just a simple regex.
To demonstrate that it's not a rocket sciense to parse Google results, I just wrote this quick and dirty, nasty hack in the command line:
(it's all in one line) And this is what I have in my new perl-links.txt file:
In 180-character command line I wrote a Google frontend, and the parser itself takes only 75 characters including "perl -ne", so it's a real one-liner. I'm sure I could optimize the whole damned thing to less than 100 characters. But why the hell I'm writing this?! I must be very tired... I guess, my point is, that I don't need no stinkin API! (Note to self: must decrease daily 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine dose below LD50 as soon as possible)
Check out the Interface Hall of Shame. Windows-centric, but very good.
When there's something like this in the email:
and your client loads this image, they know someone is reading their spam at your address and they can log that your address is worth spamming, for future spam or selling it to other spammers. So your stolen bandwidth is actually a little problem, automatically rendering html email has much more serious problems than wasting the bandwidth. It's like a return receipt request which you can't ignore. A return receipt which is not sent by email but directly through tcp/ip, so the email sender knows your geographical location, your ISP, etc.
See what one AC replied to my comment in the past discussion, very good one.
I see that most of people probably don't know that there are already Perl modules on CPAN to search Google and even to use Google cache:
See also:
WWW::Search::AOL::Classifieds::Employment, WWW::Search::AP, WWW::Search::AlltheWeb, WWW::Search::AltaVista, WWW::Search::AltaVista::AdvancedNews, WWW::Search::AltaVista::AdvancedWeb, WWW::Search::AltaVista::Careers, WWW::Search::AltaVista::Intranet, WWW::Search::AltaVista::Intranet3, WWW::Search::AltaVista::NL, WWW::Search::AltaVista::News, WWW::Search::AltaVista::Web, WWW::Search::Brassring, WWW::Search::CraigsList, WWW::Search::Crawler, WWW::Search::Dice, WWW::Search::Ebay, WWW::Search::Ebay::ByEndDate, WWW::Search::EuroSeek, WWW::Search::Excite::News, WWW::Search::ExciteForWebServers, WWW::Search::Fireball, WWW::Search::FirstGov, WWW::Search::FolioViews, WWW::Search::Go, WWW::Search::GoTo, WWW::Search::Google, WWW::Search::Gopher, WWW::Search::HeadHunter, WWW::Search::HotBot, WWW::Search::HotFiles, WWW::Search::HotJobs, WWW::Search::Livelink, WWW::Search::LookSmart, WWW::Search::Lycos, WWW::Search::MSIndexServer, WWW::Search::MetaCrawler, WWW::Search::Metapedia, WWW::Search::Monster, WWW::Search::NetFind, WWW::Search::Newsbytes, WWW::Search::Nomade, WWW::Search::NorthernLight, WWW::Search::Null, WWW::Search::OpenDirectory, WWW::Search::PLweb, WWW::Search::PRWire, WWW::Search::PubMed, WWW::Search::RpmFind, WWW::Search::SFgate, WWW::Search::Scraper, WWW::Search::Scraper::BAJobs, WWW::Search::Scraper::BayAreaHelpWanted, WWW::Search::Scraper::Beaucoup, WWW::Search::Scraper::Brainpower, WWW::Search::Scraper::CraigsList, WWW::Search::Scraper::Dice, WWW::Search::Scraper::Dogpile, WWW::Search::Scraper::FieldTranslation, WWW::Search::Scraper::FlipDog, WWW::Search::Scraper::Google, WWW::Search::Scraper::JustTechJobs, WWW::Search::Scraper::Lycos, WWW::Search::Scraper::Monster, WWW::Search::Scraper::NorthernLight, WWW::Search::Scraper::Request, WWW::Search::Scraper::Request::Job, WWW::Search::Scraper::Request::ZIPplus4, WWW::Search::Scraper::Response, WWW::Search::Scraper::Response::Auction, WWW::Search::Scraper::Response::Job, WWW::Search::Scraper::Response::Sherlock, WWW::Search::Scraper::Sherlock, WWW::Search::Scraper::TidyXML, WWW::Search::Scraper::ZIPplus4, WWW::Search::Scraper::apartments, WWW::Search::Scraper::computerjobs, WWW::Search::Scraper::eBay, WWW::Search::Scraper::techies, WWW::Search::Scraper::theWorksUSA, WWW::Search::Search97, WWW::Search::Simple, WWW::Search::Snap, WWW::Search::Test, WWW::Search::Translator, WWW::Search::Verity, WWW::Search::VoilaFr, WWW::Search::WashPost, WWW::Search::WashTech, WWW::Search::Yahoo, WWW::Search::Yahoo::Classifieds::Employment, WWW::Search::Yahoo::Japan::News, WWW::Search::Yahoo::Korea, WWW::Search::Yahoo::News::Advanced, WWW::Search::Yahoo::UK, WWW::Search::YahooNews, WWW::Search::ZDNet and WWW::SearchResult.
As you can see, it's already possible to use lots of different search engines in your own scripts. Of cource it's great news about Google API, but I wouldn't exactly call it a revolution. You could write a dozen of your scripts a very long time ago.
I haven't ever heard about it, until I read your comment. After a quick Google searching I found some info about it.
In the Summer 2000 issue of The Perl Journal, Simon Cozens wrote Perlix, The Perl Operating System article:
Very interesting text, he mentions Tom Christiansen's Perl Power Tools: The Unix Reconstruction Project - "Our goal is quite simply to reimplement the classic Unix command set in pure Perl, and to have as much fun as we can doing so." I like the simple version of cat:
Simon Cozens also writes about Gregor Purdy's Perl Shell (psh) - "The Perl Shell is a shell that combines the interactive nature of a Unix shell with the power of Perl. The goal is to eventually have a full featured shell that behaves as expected for normal shell activity. But, the Perl Shell will use Perl syntax and functionality for control-flow statements and other things." - and about Claudio Calvelli's Linux filesystem written in Perl (PerlFS), but the link is dead and I couldn't find the new PerlFS home page (anyone knows it?).
On 2000-09-26 the SF Project: Perlix Kernel was registered by Bill Dahab. The Perlix.sf.net homepage is empty, the Development Status is Planning. The stats show more activity a year ago. Here's the summary:
Let me also quote the latest news about Perlix:
I also found Greg McLearn's Perl Operating System: Initial Planning Stage from 2001-11-23:
It sounds very interesting and I'm going to find out more about the current stage of Perlix/PerlOS development (if any). If anyone knows something interesting, please let us know.
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which supporters view as the government's best shot yet at reining in online smut, requires public libraries to install filtering software on all computers or lose federal technology funding.
Kinda ironic acronym for Children's Internet Protection Act, fighting for censorship of porn. I mean, if I had something like this in Poland, I wouldn't be able to read about CIPA!
I think that if you want to censor offensive informations, you shouldn't choose a name which is itself offensive in different language, unless you want to be censored as well...
Children's Internet Protection Act - it's the funniest thing I read today! Thank you CIPA, you made my day!
Thanks. :)
Yes, in a sense that most of people think while they say about using the software. That person can only use the software, which doesn't include copying, distribution and modification. But still you can use the software in the same way as a legally purchased copy of Microsoft Windows, in fact, even more freely, since you don't have to accept Windows EULA. So in practice the GPL doesn't mean anything to the end user (GPL in not EULA - End User License Agreement), you don't have to accept it.
But if you want to distribute or modify the software, you don't have anything which would give you any right to do it unless you accept GPL. If you don't accept the GPL, all you have is the standard copyright law, which doesn't give you those rights. So you can't copy or change the software and say that you haven't accepted the GPL, because the law prohibits copying and making modifications in the first place.
Read the section Terms And Conditions For Copying, Distribution And Modification of the GNU General Public License, paragraphs 0 and 5, my emphasis:
Many people don't know that, I hope it's clear now.
So the patents make it complicated... I haven't thought about patents here, so I thought it would be solved if someone just rewrites those specs, something like OT III - Scientologys "secret" course rewritten for beginners. But fortunately, once again, software patents saved the day!
The whole thing starts to look really nasty... I wonder what will be the free software community riposte.
From the license:
Even reading the licence doesn't mean you accept it. Usually you have to accept the license, because nothing else gives you right to use or copy the software. But here, I can accept the license and use the software and you can probe by computer and reverse engineer it. You don't need to accept the license, because you don't need any rights which you otherwise wouldn't have.
Disclaimer: I'm ANAL and this is my illegal advice.
That is why Dr. John M. Ivancevich and Dr. Thomas N. Duening, the authors of "Managing Einsteins", are writing their next book entitled "Working for Rockefellers".
I think I'll write something like this in my resume:
Everyone will want to hire me.
Freedom was always the most important priority for the free software folks, from 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project, to now. In 1998 the OSI launch was announced by Eric S. Raymond, because he "realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with free software in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape."
My point is that if you don't like FSF because they're "picking one word [freedom] as a slogan and wielding it as a weapon", than just join the OSI and be happy, instead of complaining about FSF having different attitude than OSI (which is quite obvious, otherwise the OSI would have not been founded). You're not going to convince GNU people to stop talking about freedom after 20 years (ESR knew that 4 years ago).
How can people not draw a distinction between FSF and OSI based on free/open difference, if that distinction is the very reason why OSI has been started?
Those definitions (and the motivations behind using them) are the main difference between FSF and OSI. That is why free software and open source software can cooperate so well. I use, write and promote free software, not only because I like high quality software, but because I like freedom in the first place. For me the high quality is a very nice side effect, but not the whole purpose. People who use, write and promote open source software, put the quality and practical advantages over the ideological and ethical aspects. We all can work together, because it's usually the same software released under the same licenses.
Read the free software definition and the open source definition. Compare the list of free software licenses with the list of open source licenses. People behind OSI are doing pretty much the same as people behind FSF, the only important difference is in the motivations. And that is why I said that "you're complaining that FSF is not OSI", commenting your:
I hope it's clear now.
I used to think exactly the same, until one CD proved me wrong.
As far as I know, they are making experiments on some guy to avoid that effect.
Yes, I think we should protest by not buying that CD. Oh, wait a minute...