We all thought it was true because we wouldn't put it past Microsoft for having such a flaw. We can't inspect the code to their software, so who knows what they might plug in.
The point could be made (I did not read ESR, I had no urge to read the SAME drivel over again) that with opensource, especially Apache, such flaws are hard to get past the thousands who use/code for it. If programmers A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J find programmer K's backdoor, they'll all remove it before it gets major distribution, and if it somehow, by some freak accident makes it out in a release, we'll all be shocked as hell (some Ms trolls will parade it as the fall of opensource), then we'll promptly download the 2k or so of code to patch it (that came with the announcemnet), recompile, and be done with it. Thus the fundamental answer of "No."
Simple. They didn't intend to. Some programmer could have decided to add one in of their own free will. If they did add one, would you know? How? If they TOLD you would you buy it? No. You stated that yourself. But what if they didn't? Let's hope UCITA isn't passed in your state...
Most all Microsoft products do not include their source code. Had they inserted a backdoor no one would know, or been able to find out with any relative ease. With opensource, said backdoor would never have been allowed into 90% of *nix systems. (the last 10% are suckers who installed untrustworthy binaries from some punk and run 24/7 as root).
There are some corporations that don't intend to make the best product they can and sell it. They compete viciously, sometimes illegally, to crush competition to the point that they don't have to make the best to make money because they can make lots of money selling something that is far from the best they could do (whew!), since there is (or, has been) no option to turn to. Linux/*BSD, quite simply, is going to be near impossible for them to crush, if it can be crushed at all. Lets hope this forces changes.
Slashdot must be right! Microsoft is an evil corporation which only exists to let people break into your computer and see your pr0n! Acting like an ass doesn't help you.
Since you appear to be the only person doing this work, I suggest you give up the futile effort.
You're getting out what is now *NON-INFORMATION*, which could have been real information, and might have had an effect if you:
A) hadn't broadcasted it with an unnecessarily hateful and spiteful tone and
B) hadn't spammed the article.
Now you'll get moderated down as redundant in all of your posts, instead of getting rated up as insightful. Conflicting viewpoints are not always moderated down. Rarely in fact, and those that do are brought back up and meta moderation takes care of the moderator. Except when you take your role of "town asshole" and everyone gladly takes a shit on you.
Next time, think your "comment" out a bit better, and make sure you leave the unnecessary "fuck the moderators", "this will be moderated down", preaching to the "Trolls of the world", and calling everyone "linux losers" out and maybe people won't be so quickly repulsed.
Someone who immediately comes off as hostile who rants and raves with only a MINIMALLY apparent reason isn't likely to be taken seriously. You are one of those people. Enjoy, as you may have had a message, but screwed yourself.
If you're doing mathematical computations, your best bet would be a CPU good with floating point. Your best bet would be an SMP Alpha. With a better floating point unit than Intel and AMD, and an outright faster CPU, you'd get a lot more done in less time. Only problem in this case is cost, since the average Alpha system, IIRC, costs more than most x86 systems. That might not be true, so do your research.
In most cases if they signed it off to the FSF under the GPL, they could still pressure the FSF to stop distributing it, or sign it away. Doesn't eliminate the copies out there, but that does hinder it's distribution.
Their best bet in this case would have been to resign it to public domain, then noone can touch it.
Sometimes I am truly astounded that we got to the moon and back. Not because we couldn't build the rockets, but because the guidance and control is so complex.
Not only that, but they did it with what we consider now to be ancient technology, doing the math on paper for the most part, and even succeded in bringing a damaged spacecraft home (how about we throw a thousand random variables in there? Just for kicks?).
You're right. I seriously doubt any quick perl hack could keep such a complex system operating, even with today's technology.
As has been stated (repeatedly as far as I can tell), XFree86 has built in 2D support for the G400, including support for it's dualhead feature. You can get OpenGL support from the GLx project.
It's one of the best, and most widely supported, cards out there (hell for linux it beats nvidia into the ground).
For TV-In you're better off with a seperate TV Card.
Why?
When was the last time you bought a motherboard with integrated video, or intergrated sound, two things that often require upgrades (as opposed to IDE and SCSI, which are fairly static)?
When was the last time you replaced your video card? Get one with a built in tv-tuner and you'll need to buy the same tv hardware all over again. Go for a Hauppauge WinTV-D (or plain WinTV), so you can watch TV on any video card you own, as opposed to only the card you have in at the moment.
Nope. Few GeForce cards even have Tv-out. The chipset itself is designed to run as a single, independent chip.
The dualhead feature of the G400 (and it's inherited 2D performance) does make it a good card for 2D work in photoshop and various publishing applications. But 3D wise, yes, the GeForce does paste it to the wall (then draws a funny little mustache on it!)
I am not here to argue that what China did was right. Censorship is censorship, but I still want to know what Jamie [email: jamie@mccarthy.org ] was thinking when he said "Porn, however, is free for all 1.3 bilion people to view. Go figure."
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PORN?
Don't you understand the concept of irony? Read some of his previous posts and you'll get what he means...
Jamie, by the way, is the lead poster for the YRO section and other civil liberties issues. I suggest you read carefully when he posts, espcially when it concerns the US.
That card's core is a highly specialized chip, focusing on the math for the transformation of points, lights, textures, blurs, and several things that don't involve most of the core of an x86 chip. Linux will never run on it unless they make one with a big flash rom, and a general purpose controller chip (read: i960 or other).
What kind of use is the card? LOTS! Go check out the Intergraph Intense3D Wildcat 4110. It runs in most prebuilt p2/p3 graphics workstations (huge card), and takes so much of the processing off of it, the only thing the cpus are needed for is getting the software started, and other extended math calculations (we love those fcurves!), and rendering of the final image. By the way, this card does everything the geforce AND v5 do... but i'm not sure as to it's fillrate, but 21fps in a scene with 80000 polys is impressive. And game cards are catching up quite quickly to the power of the "industrial card".
Acelleration... What needs to be done is the accelleration of the front side bus. It's just poking along at roughly 133mhz now, maybe 200 on athlon systems (but that's only ram to cpu). It'd be better if that were 1/1 with the cpu speed, or if it were faster, leaving the cpu with a wide open pipe to the ram and the other system peripherals.
I think you're wandering a bit left of center here.
You can't *legally* download delphi.
Copyright infringement could potentially damage the reputation of both the lead maintainer, and anyone else involve (not to mention legal suits if copyrighted units are distributed).
Now, if you were to write the whole thing from scratch (no vcl, no pre-manufactured units), you'd A) be wasting lots of time and B) be fully legal to distribute under anything you wanted.
You couldn't use the GPL, because your project would involve some part of the VCL most likely (TForm comes to mind), and that's copyrighted. What's worse, is if your project relies on using a unit that's only distributed with different versions of Delphi. Math.dcu and the NT Service wizard come to mind. Consider any other copyrighted units you might be using that you can't distribute.
You could try the Artistic license, or XFree86, or hang it all out and go BSD, which would likely have no problems with the VCL copyrights, or any other component copyrights for that matter, but then you lose any possibility of control.
That's about as good a reason as "Because I said so", which doesn't work because there is always a chance that there is life on some planet (go look at the tough bacteria here on earth. tell me they couldn't possibly survive on europa).
The odds are probably a LOT lower than you think, probably 1 in 2 (there either is or isn't life there), and I'll bet you that there IS, especially with all of that water (and heat from it's core. don't tell me it's totally frozen. Look at Io as proof that Jupiter does to Europa's core what it does to all of Io). Go read 3001 for an idea Clarke has on how life could possibly survive. Good book too (clarke said it could have been better tho...)
But if you ask me, I say it's Promise's fault for making the cards so similar that such a simple modification makes the cheap card the expensive card. In the end, to save money on production costs they ended up paying for it later, when a few smart people figured out what little it was that made those cards different.
They have no legal recourse. The only thing they can do is, as expected, refuse customer service if they know it's been done, and wait for the next hardware revision, because software probably can't detect the changes.
I think i speak for most people when I say the downsides outweigh the value of posting anonymously...
For example, the flagrant abuse of it for the past few articles, incessant spamming of everything. I don't know why they do it, shits and giggles? I say that you're going to have to limit Anonymous posting, or give moderators more powers, or Slashdot is going to go to hell.
What is bad is that it's become a peice of "Use on One computer only" software, licensed under their own restrictive terms.
How different is this from FreeBSD?
This is why I don't really like the BSD *AT TIMES* because it allows people to take a work, slap a restrictive license on it, and resell it in a way that the people who created the work on which it's based can't even use it freely.
The episodes with them were always some of the best. Now, what would the focus be of their show? If they're going to hack, is it going to be realistic (heh yeah right), or is it going to be classic X-Files type stories? I doubt they'll be chasing freaks and ghosts, or aliens, but you never know...
Maybe their Alien Episode involves one of their 'puters crunching an important signal block from Seti@Home?
Slashdot Mirror
We all thought it was true because we wouldn't put it past Microsoft for having such a flaw. We can't inspect the code to their software, so who knows what they might plug in.
The point could be made (I did not read ESR, I had no urge to read the SAME drivel over again) that with opensource, especially Apache, such flaws are hard to get past the thousands who use/code for it. If programmers A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J find programmer K's backdoor, they'll all remove it before it gets major distribution, and if it somehow, by some freak accident makes it out in a release, we'll all be shocked as hell (some Ms trolls will parade it as the fall of opensource), then we'll promptly download the 2k or so of code to patch it (that came with the announcemnet), recompile, and be done with it. Thus the fundamental answer of "No."
Simple. They didn't intend to. Some programmer could have decided to add one in of their own free will. If they did add one, would you know? How? If they TOLD you would you buy it? No. You stated that yourself. But what if they didn't? Let's hope UCITA isn't passed in your state...
Most all Microsoft products do not include their source code. Had they inserted a backdoor no one would know, or been able to find out with any relative ease. With opensource, said backdoor would never have been allowed into 90% of *nix systems. (the last 10% are suckers who installed untrustworthy binaries from some punk and run 24/7 as root).
There are some corporations that don't intend to make the best product they can and sell it. They compete viciously, sometimes illegally, to crush competition to the point that they don't have to make the best to make money because they can make lots of money selling something that is far from the best they could do (whew!), since there is (or, has been) no option to turn to. Linux/*BSD, quite simply, is going to be near impossible for them to crush, if it can be crushed at all. Lets hope this forces changes.
Slashdot must be right! Microsoft is an evil corporation which only exists to let people break into your computer and see your pr0n!
Acting like an ass doesn't help you.
Since you appear to be the only person doing this work, I suggest you give up the futile effort.
You're getting out what is now *NON-INFORMATION*, which could have been real information, and might have had an effect if you:
A) hadn't broadcasted it with an unnecessarily hateful and spiteful tone and
B) hadn't spammed the article.
Now you'll get moderated down as redundant in all of your posts, instead of getting rated up as insightful. Conflicting viewpoints are not always moderated down. Rarely in fact, and those that do are brought back up and meta moderation takes care of the moderator. Except when you take your role of "town asshole" and everyone gladly takes a shit on you.
Next time, think your "comment" out a bit better, and make sure you leave the unnecessary "fuck the moderators", "this will be moderated down", preaching to the "Trolls of the world", and calling everyone "linux losers" out and maybe people won't be so quickly repulsed.
Someone who immediately comes off as hostile who rants and raves with only a MINIMALLY apparent reason isn't likely to be taken seriously. You are one of those people. Enjoy, as you may have had a message, but screwed yourself.
So you can a) play regular CDs and b) use CD-Rs with MP3s burned to it.
Not meant to be flamebait or anything (merely informing the poster above...)
I am assuming that they run their own ircd
You bet they do!
Microsoft Exchange Chat Service!
Microsoft's own special perversion of RFC 1419!
If you're doing mathematical computations, your best bet would be a CPU good with floating point. Your best bet would be an SMP Alpha. With a better floating point unit than Intel and AMD, and an outright faster CPU, you'd get a lot more done in less time. Only problem in this case is cost, since the average Alpha system, IIRC, costs more than most x86 systems. That might not be true, so do your research.
In most cases if they signed it off to the FSF under the GPL, they could still pressure the FSF to stop distributing it, or sign it away.
Doesn't eliminate the copies out there, but that does hinder it's distribution.
Their best bet in this case would have been to resign it to public domain, then noone can touch it.
Ever read Asimov's short story, The Last Question? It poses a real interesting twist to this whole entropy-god-computers-spirituality thing.
Open Source would not be as popular if Window$ was GPLed
But if windows was GPLed, it would be Open Source, and therefore, opensource would be just as popular (maybe), now wouldn't it?
think about it...
Sometimes I am truly astounded that we got to the moon and back. Not because we couldn't build the rockets, but because the guidance and control is so complex.
Not only that, but they did it with what we consider now to be ancient technology, doing the math on paper for the most part, and even succeded in bringing a damaged spacecraft home (how about we throw a thousand random variables in there? Just for kicks?).
You're right. I seriously doubt any quick perl hack could keep such a complex system operating, even with today's technology.
As has been stated (repeatedly as far as I can tell), XFree86 has built in 2D support for the G400, including support for it's dualhead feature. You can get OpenGL support from the GLx project.
It's one of the best, and most widely supported, cards out there (hell for linux it beats nvidia into the ground).
For TV-In you're better off with a seperate TV Card.
Why?
When was the last time you bought a motherboard with integrated video, or intergrated sound, two things that often require upgrades (as opposed to IDE and SCSI, which are fairly static)?
When was the last time you replaced your video card? Get one with a built in tv-tuner and you'll need to buy the same tv hardware all over again. Go for a Hauppauge WinTV-D (or plain WinTV), so you can watch TV on any video card you own, as opposed to only the card you have in at the moment.
Nope. Few GeForce cards even have Tv-out. The chipset itself is designed to run as a single, independent chip.
The dualhead feature of the G400 (and it's inherited 2D performance) does make it a good card for 2D work in photoshop and various publishing applications. But 3D wise, yes, the GeForce does paste it to the wall (then draws a funny little mustache on it!)
First off, the ARTICLE makes reference to the porn.
Second, the comments in the post were made by iKev, NOT jamie.
Third, READ BEFORE YOU POST. If that means reading previous articles by the author to get an Idea of what they have dealt with, DO SO!
I am not here to argue that what China did was right. Censorship is censorship, but I still want to know what Jamie [email: jamie@mccarthy.org ] was thinking when he said "Porn, however, is free for all 1.3 bilion people to view. Go figure."
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PORN?
Don't you understand the concept of irony? Read some of his previous posts and you'll get what he means...
Jamie, by the way, is the lead poster for the YRO section and other civil liberties issues. I suggest you read carefully when he posts, espcially when it concerns the US.
That card's core is a highly specialized chip, focusing on the math for the transformation of points, lights, textures, blurs, and several things that don't involve most of the core of an x86 chip. Linux will never run on it unless they make one with a big flash rom, and a general purpose controller chip (read: i960 or other).
What kind of use is the card? LOTS! Go check out the Intergraph Intense3D Wildcat 4110. It runs in most prebuilt p2/p3 graphics workstations (huge card), and takes so much of the processing off of it, the only thing the cpus are needed for is getting the software started, and other extended math calculations (we love those fcurves!), and rendering of the final image. By the way, this card does everything the geforce AND v5 do... but i'm not sure as to it's fillrate, but 21fps in a scene with 80000 polys is impressive. And game cards are catching up quite quickly to the power of the "industrial card".
Acelleration... What needs to be done is the accelleration of the front side bus. It's just poking along at roughly 133mhz now, maybe 200 on athlon systems (but that's only ram to cpu). It'd be better if that were 1/1 with the cpu speed, or if it were faster, leaving the cpu with a wide open pipe to the ram and the other system peripherals.
I think you're wandering a bit left of center here.
You can't *legally* download delphi.
Copyright infringement could potentially damage the reputation of both the lead maintainer, and anyone else involve (not to mention legal suits if copyrighted units are distributed).
Now, if you were to write the whole thing from scratch (no vcl, no pre-manufactured units), you'd A) be wasting lots of time and B) be fully legal to distribute under anything you wanted.
You couldn't use the GPL, because your project would involve some part of the VCL most likely (TForm comes to mind), and that's copyrighted. What's worse, is if your project relies on using a unit that's only distributed with different versions of Delphi. Math.dcu and the NT Service wizard come to mind. Consider any other copyrighted units you might be using that you can't distribute.
You could try the Artistic license, or XFree86, or hang it all out and go BSD, which would likely have no problems with the VCL copyrights, or any other component copyrights for that matter, but then you lose any possibility of control.
...it's stupid because it's stupid
That's about as good a reason as "Because I said so", which doesn't work because there is always a chance that there is life on some planet (go look at the tough bacteria here on earth. tell me they couldn't possibly survive on europa).
The odds are probably a LOT lower than you think, probably 1 in 2 (there either is or isn't life there), and I'll bet you that there IS, especially with all of that water (and heat from it's core. don't tell me it's totally frozen. Look at Io as proof that Jupiter does to Europa's core what it does to all of Io). Go read 3001 for an idea Clarke has on how life could possibly survive. Good book too (clarke said it could have been better tho...)
But if you ask me, I say it's Promise's fault for making the cards so similar that such a simple modification makes the cheap card the expensive card. In the end, to save money on production costs they ended up paying for it later, when a few smart people figured out what little it was that made those cards different.
They have no legal recourse. The only thing they can do is, as expected, refuse customer service if they know it's been done, and wait for the next hardware revision, because software probably can't detect the changes.
Buying it makes no difference. You don't get the source anyways.
The only difference is if you buy it, you get their VCL, which is a very powerful collection of GUI and non-GUI tools.
I think i speak for most people when I say the downsides outweigh the value of posting anonymously...
For example, the flagrant abuse of it for the past few articles, incessant spamming of everything. I don't know why they do it, shits and giggles? I say that you're going to have to limit Anonymous posting, or give moderators more powers, or Slashdot is going to go to hell.
Then I do hope your post gets moderated up for the sake of people like me :)
Another distro isn't so bad.
What is bad is that it's become a peice of "Use on One computer only" software, licensed under their own restrictive terms.
How different is this from FreeBSD?
This is why I don't really like the BSD *AT TIMES* because it allows people to take a work, slap a restrictive license on it, and resell it in a way that the people who created the work on which it's based can't even use it freely.
But then, it's your choice as to the license...
/me thinks... GNU BSD?
*ASBESTOS SUIT ON!*
"w1ll h4x0r j00!!"
I bet they will.
The episodes with them were always some of the best. Now, what would the focus be of their show? If they're going to hack, is it going to be realistic (heh yeah right), or is it going to be classic X-Files type stories? I doubt they'll be chasing freaks and ghosts, or aliens, but you never know...
Maybe their Alien Episode involves one of their 'puters crunching an important signal block from Seti@Home?