Other than the fact that Apple have released very little stuff they developed themselves, they'd have been better off giving FreeType an unlimited license to TrueType hinting, instead of forcing them to develop an auto-hinter. It wouldn't have even cost anything, I don't know how much they make out of these royalties but I doubt it's much. Yet they do not.
Almost certainly little or nothing. MS already has an unlimited license. However, it has a good deal of worth to Apple in that it adds value to their system in the publishing field -- higher quality font rendering. It's a lovely barrier to entry, and gives Apple an excellent leg up over its competitors (BSD, Linux, etc). I doubt Apple will be giving out licenses any time soon.
I'll give a good guess that (assuming these are TrueType) that the guy is using a stock binary release of FreeType, which has part of the hinting system disabled to avoid patent issues.
I'd like to see a screenshot from someone who's flipped it on.
Not that I'm complaining... the more fonts the better!!!
I have to say that what Linux really needs is a free top-notch vector font editor, something along the lines of Fontographer. Look at what happened to graphics and icons in interfaces after the GIMP stablized -- they vastly improved. There are a lot of people who'd be willing to "debug" odd spacing in fonts or make fonts *if* they had good tools to do it.
The problem is that this is a pretty non-trivial problem (hell, there isn't even a comprehensive general vector graphics program yet, much less a specialized one).
Something that can let people hand-hint fonts comes out...and instead of recieving a single fish, we can catch our own.
"Setting the standard for excellence in font technology, Bitstream holds numerous key patents in the U.S. that cover the creation of portable fonts for the Internet. Building on this experience, Bitstream has released ThunderHawk, a breakthrough technology for the wireless Web."
Not a big deal right now, but I see friction in the upcoming years as more people come in contact with the Open Source world and cultures clash -- the current corporate view of intellectual property and legal systems for supporting it in the United States don't fit very well with it...
Ah, well. I shouldn't be such a downer right after such a good event. Thank you, Bitstream!
Blocking outbound will also prevent any open relays on their network from going off their network; it is then an internal affair which they can clean up, without getting onto blackhole lists or bothering anyone else.
And how does this differ from inbound? Again, not that I think that *inbound* blocking is a good idea -- simply that proposing 25 outbound instead of inbound is nuts.
DNS is inherently hierarchical.
But DNS does not have a single tree, and I can choose to use it or not. IP should not become dependent upon the workings of a single DNS tree. We were *just* talking about the fallibility of DNS, so reliability is an issue. In addition, the reason I consider the current DNS system acceptable is because people can choose to use it or not. No one has to accept the desires of a single "Internet czar". You are proposing to make IP do exactly this, for the first time *ever*, because you find it a quicker temporary fix than whitelists.
Note that what I'm suggesting is more to move mail clients to use the MSA port (587) instead of the SMTP port, and get everyone to send e-mail by routing it through the "proper" mail server, so that accountability and authentication can be maintained.
I completely disagree with you that there is a "proper" mail server, or a "proper" DNS server to use. That idea is completely foreign to the Internet.
I don't accept a solution of only accepting mail from people I have authorized. I don't have a master list of everyone I'd accept mail from. Doing it by having a list of certifying authorities that I'll accept regardless is even more restrictive than what I'm suggesting.
Yes, because you just suggested a system that makes the following bogus assumptions to *function*:
* Everyone will adopt it. Zero spam reduction benefit unless everyone implements it. * *All* networks have a network admin with time to watch for any of their users beginning to spam and take action and have anti-spam policies in place. Any mail server admin is considered trusted. Any violation of this assumption worldwide breaks your model. * No one will be negatively impacted by it -- they should interact with the network in the same way you do, the "proper" way. Hence, no one will start tunneling around it.
First everyone sending mail directly, or through the "wrong" mail server, have to be persuaded to start doing it the "right" way.
What you are calling "wrong" is not only legitimate and traditional (UNIX machines running a mail server themselves), but has significant functionality benefits (transient machines don't have to change gateways around, unsendable reporting is quicker and configurable).
Then anyone who complains about receiving SPAM from your network, that didn't go through your mail server, can be simply told to fix their mail server.
And many people, like me, will tell you to go soak your head.
I just can't understand why no one gets this. The security of the model you are proposing is almost nonexistant. A spammer can move to an ISP that doesn't care about it, exploit any "trusted" machine that has a mail server with an admin that doesn't immediately clamp down. It *will not provide a benefit*. It *will* be a complete pain in the ass to those of us that *do* use the features that you're trying to eliminate.
This sounds like the firewall argument. IT types *looove* blocking every port imagineable and never taking a look *inside* the network because it's much easier for them. Of course, that just means that hackers shift to other weak points (say, mass-send an email with an executable attachment telling users to run it...and once inside the network, they run rampant, making it *incredibly* difficult to clean it out again). It's really easy to block a port. It's really hard to do things properly.
The old model is a good one, well designed for the environment in which it was made, which is where all users are trusted. Your model is a lousy one, because it tries to make a minimal number of changes, breaks a number of features, and provides essentially zero benefits over the good one. (Want an example? It tries to block open relays from being exploited -- despite *years* of RBL/etc blocking, spam *still* pours into inboxes at an increasing rate, and this will get a subset of that, since RBL is pretty good at finding open relays). *Any* move to fix things should be to a new, good model -- which almost certainly entails whitelists.
Hmm...that's true. I didn't bother to think through the statement which the author had on his page:
LZO and the LZO algorithms and implementations are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) { auf Deutsch }. Special licenses for commercial and other applications are available by contacting the author.
The bit about the algorithms is presumably bogus, then.
Ooh, I want in too! I can make a precatching web proxy, bundle an IE wrapper, and speed up the Web! All I need is lots and lots of venture capital, oh, and no details available to let people tear me to shreds. Heck, I'm older than this 16-year-old -- I should be *rolling* in reputability.
I'll bet you some fool gets parted from his money, though. People have invested in every high tech scam ever tried, especially if the media reports it. Awful.
Blocking OUTbound port 25 allows an ISP to control SPAM coming from their ports, without blocking people from using any MSA they want
A spammer can choose their ISP. They cannot choose the ISP that an open relay is running. If an ISP blocks outbound 25, it's an attempt to block a spammer from operating directly from an ISP. They simply move to another ISP. Piece of cake, throwaway account. OTOH, if an ISP blocks inbound 25, they immediately prevent any of their systems from being used as open relays. The open relays on their network will not move around.
The success of a block-outbound-25 system requires near-absolute, 99% of all Internet addresses having 25 outbound blocked. In the meantime, you get no benefit in reduction of spam, because spammers simply shift around to avoid blocks, and everyone *still* gets the same amount of spam in their in box.
Also, when I'm talking about authentication, I'm talking about client-level. If I only accept valid PGP-signed messages from people I want to get mail from (and if I want to recieve mail from anywhere in the company, I just choose to trust the company master signing cert), then I don't ever have problems with this.
Eventually, the block on port 25 can be dropped, as anyone trying to send mail by connecting directly to an SMTP server will be rejected since the MX records don't match.
I really dislike this. The Internet has always been, and is in its very structure peer-based. Even DNS is like this -- I can use a different DNS root if I want to (as a matter of fact, I did for some time). This is an attempt to move IP itself to become hierarchical, to depend upon a single DNS system, and to have "special" hosts. I claim that most of the people doing this are not considering the implications -- I suspect someong bringing this up somewhere like NANOG would get laughed down.
If I am a peer on the Internet, I should have the rights and privileges accorded other peers. No more, no less. If the *only* way to solve the spam problem was to alter the structure of the Internet, then I suppose that that would have to be done, but outbound 25 blocking is no more necessary that mandatory DRM on devices or other bad-idea short term fixes.
A system based on outbound 25 blocking and MX lookups requires *every* mail server admin to be alert and constantly on the lookout for anyone abusing their server. It requires *all* ISPs to participate. I claim that such a system is unworkable.
Open file formats and open standards means that the kids data (or data on the kids, such as transcripts and so forth) will not be locked in to a specific vendor.
This is true, and a good point. I'd point out that it's a bit lessened, since schools tend to upgrade less frequently than, say, a business might -- my guidance counselors used terminal-based software that was probably at least ten years old, and I don't think they've upgraded it -- it works for what they need to do. Also, they tend to need to do less data manipulation than a business might do on customer information, so it may be less of a benefit than one might expect. However, this is still quite true. Along the same lines, *one day* the data will be moved to a newer system, and when that happens, if the source is around, it will likely be easier to migrate, even if the original vendor is defunct by then.
Source availability means the school can customize the software if needed.
It's not impossible, but I'd have to say that I think most schools are unlikely to do this.
TCO. 'nuff said? Microsoft-funded studies to the contrary, there's plenty of other case evidence of free software having a lower TCO than Windows.
Good point. I'd suggest that rather than reducing TCO, however (regardless of what happens, I suspect that my high school will probably never get more or less than one tech person working at the school), it probably frees up more time for the sole techie, which means more time available for other things. I'm also not entirely sure what the situation is with low-end Linux system administration -- conventional wisdom has said for a while that UNIX sysadmins are harder to find and more costly (a serious issue for most schools) than someone who can handle a Windows network.
Adopting free software means that lower-income families that are likely to have donated computers (or computers as gifts) if they have one at all will be able to use the same software that is used in the school. Locking them in to a specific vendor's proprietary software could create an "economically oppressive" situation.
Hmm. This is a new idea, and I personally think the best. A student can work at home or at school. If they work with a piece of software, they can "just download it" legally to use elsewhere.
LZO is even worse than GIF in terms of IP entanglement.
I think the GPL is nice and all, but trying to force it on people by using formats that cannot be used with non-GPL software freely is no better than what Microsoft does with propriatary protocols.
I want Open Source to win because it's *better*, not because some jerk is trying to use nasty tactics against people using an alternative.
It was one of the best motivators for technological improvement ever. PNG is better than GIF for almost *all* images except *extremely* small images, like those one-pixel spacers that people used to use.
Unfortunately, while PNG is now *used*, it still isn't as common as it should be.
No you can't. Your ISP hasn't set up an MX for any of its dialup IPs, so that mail addy is invalid. may as well use a@b.com
Yes, but most mail servers will happily deliver directly to a machine if there's no MX address present. I've done this many times.:-) Yay UNIX legacy issues.
As well they should. dialup space is a great source of questionable email and blocking it saves everybody a big headache.
It may well be a great source of questionable email, but blocking it sporadically does *not* save headaches. You have spammers that will happily get broadband or an overseas shell account, worms that simply use the local mailserver and people that break into machines to use them and sending stations to amplify mail. Since little spam is sent *directly* from dialup accounts and worms account for the majority of at least *my* spam, this buys nothing for anyone. It *does* become a royal pain in the ass for those of us that *do* have good reasons for running a mail server on our machines (in my case, because I switch from my home to college ISP to Verizon frequently and it's a PITA to keep updating my mail server's gateway (which means a few days of bounced mail) and because I get bounced mail back much more quickly), and it's a pain for customer support.
Ahhh...I see. I hadn't read the advisory -- I had thought that people were amplifying their attack off of the *meta*servers, not the servers. That makes more sense.
I certainly don't disagree with this, but I don't see how it applies to GNU/Linux in schools. Learning how to use a GUI is the same regardless of what kind they learn on. In my old high school they installed Macs to replace the old AMOS network they had. This didn't hurt the kids.
Sure, but that's also very different from moving from Windows to Linux. AMOS-to-Mac is moving towards a system that's more likely to be used by students after school. The same currently goes for Mac-to-Windows.
With GNU/Linux, you also have a completely scalable educational opportunity. If the kid wants to learn just basic shit that the class offers, fine. But no matter how deeply into the innards the kid wants to go, he can, with GNU/Linux. With Windows the educator eventually has to say "Sorry, it's not possible to know that unless you work for Microsoft."
I'd say that there are side benefits for each. People into operating system internals in computer science class can derive a good deal of benefit from using Linux -- it's a good start, and many of the Linux kernel hackers are quite young. Fair enough. But I claim that this is also a relatively small group. There are other side benefits that swing in favor of Windows -- in physics class, we had all sorts of devices with Windows-only controller software. There was a good deal of general-purpose Windows-only educational software (granted, there's at least one Linux project to collect educational software together, but it simply doesn't compare to the offerings for Windows).
Child psychology teaches us that the kid will choose the environment they want to live in based solely on what's available, and using Windows automatically limits them based on arbitrary Intellectual Property restrictions. GNU/Linux makes any computing environment available for the kids.
[shrug] I could as easily say that Linux limits the computing environment. Is the school going to allow people to install arbitrary software on the system? My school certainly didn't, and that was in Windows.
This is true, so far as it goes. However, schools are already used as a platform to condition kids to a political opinion. In my experience, using GNU/Linux as a tool to help them teach the kids about freedom would actually be contrary to what the schools already teach them. This is a subject for a different forum, though.:) (I'm willing to pursue it, though)
I've heard a lot of people say that it tries to make the status quo more acceptable -- I'm somewhat dubious. Yes, this does happen for part of school, but I also had a history textbook that panned our actions at the beginning of both the Spanish-American and Mexican-American wars, Panama, and our motives in WWII. I suppose that a common educational ground tends to homogenize cultures and opinions, but I don't think it's to the degree that some of the conspiracy theorists claim.
The answer to that question, based on existing implementations, is that OpenOffice.org is sufficient to teach them how to use a word processor and spreadsheet.
Sure, but so is MS Office. And one of them also familiarizes them with software that they're likely to use. I mean, you could teach driver's ed based on British traffic laws too, and it wouldn't be that hard to learn the minor differences. And for a few, this is beneficial, since they end up moving to Britain. But for most people, the familiarity with the local laws tends to be a benefit.
Fact is, an artist will naturally prefer one over the other as a basic mindset issue, but after achieving proficiency with either of them will likely find that they're both excellent tools.
I suppose in the long run, though I've seen at least three people that started out with Painter instead of Photoshop, and as a result use Painter for even retouching work, where Photoshop is probably a better tool. I'm not claiming that Open Office is bad, just that it's a worse choice for the kids in this situation.
Public schools (I realize the article is about a private school) should be more focussed on teaching the kids the concepts behind the software, because the education will be more portable when they can use their existing education (based on concepts) to learn a different implementation of those concepts.
Oooh, didn't notice it was about a private school. Ah, well. Most points still apply.:-)
MS Office can be used as a platform to teach the same concepts, though.
This is, of course, the reason we learn how to do long-hand division even though a calculator does it much quicker
A bit OT, but I like it. While this is true, it's also not the whole story. At one point, everyone learned to calculate square roots by hand. My mother certainly did, but I didn't. What caused this? The advent of the calculator. A whole set of problems that people now are not taught how to solve in their heads because they have a device that's almost always easy to hand that can do the same thin better.
We're already getting this one day of classtime learning about freedom, and as a result we now live in a society that values safety over freedom. So I ask you, have we done all that we can? Should we do more? How about the blatant hypocrisy of teaching kids about "taxation without representation" and then paying the "Microsoft tax" so that they can learn how to use windows?
This is true -- there are things I don't like about our society -- but neither is it the whole story. We are still, despite having lost some ground, a very free society relative to the overwhelming majority of the world. Furthermore, I don't see Linux as being all that crucial to convincing people that privacy should sometimes be valued over safety.
This is a human problem for which I have no solution.
I wasn't trying to criticize you -- I do the same thing. I'm just trying to point out that the Linux cause that seems so noble to us is trivial to many other people -- and that if you objectify things by looking at something other than Linux, it really can seem trivial to us as well. Would it be great if Linux became the dominant OS? Almost certainly. Is it within the realm of the school's responsibility to detract from it's students chances because officials at that school want to contribute to that cause? I cannot agree. If you want to donate time and teach a free Linux class, you donate your own time. That's something that you can ethically give. But if you take a more practically useful set of experiences from your children, and give them a weaker set, all to contribute to your cause...that I cannot agree with. And that seems, on the face of it, to be what this administrator is doing, and what some of the other posters are supporting.
It's not that Open Office and MS Office are so drastically different. They aren't, really. There aren't that many tasks, at least at the basic level, that you *cannot* accomplish with the other.
I'm not saying that a person should "learn MS Office". I'm with the many other posters that "learning word processing" skills is what's important. However, when the students leave this school, they're going to be more familiar with whatever software package they're using. Are they going to be unable to figure out how to do something in another package, given enough time, and maybe a bit of help from someone else? Probably not. Someone that learned MS Office is not going to be "doomed to never use Office". But in the package that they *have* been working with they are faster, much more facile at performing tasks, and less likely to get hung up on quirks or non-intuitive bits of a given package. So my argument is that since they *are* going to be familizarized with one, the package that they are most likely to end up using should be the one that they should be familiarized with.
In another post, I mentioned my having watched Microstation guru move to AutoCAD. It's quite doable -- you're still doing the same task with a similar tool. But it really does take a long time to become as zippy in AutoCAD as in Microstation -- those years of learning Microstation inside out really add up.
I can move from bash to zsh, too. A *lot* of work has gone into making them operate very similarly, and be compatible. But I still ran into hangups for a good year after doing the switch (at first, how to colorize my prompt in my new shell, then how to make tab completion act similarly, etc). And a shell is really pretty straightforward compared to an office suite.
Not at all. My dictionary says that a Luddite is "an opponent of technological progress". Specifically, your argument is laced with a rather vague fear of a future without the MS tit.
Nope. My argument isn't based on whether MS will be *around*, it's whether being familiar with MS Office or a similar Linux app is better for the students.
Even though I've never imported data into a spreadsheet, your description of the task of importing data was enough for me to be able to figure it out.
Uh, huh. Now go find your average, non-techie person. Someone who's used Word at some point before. Plonk them in front of your Linux box. Given that same information, have them fire up Open Office and do a couple of the tasks that seem so trivial to you. Say, copy some formatted data from a web page. Save the file. Send it to a Windows user via email. Sure, I'm more than happy to wget an HTML file, hand edit out the unnecessary crap, import it to the word processor, tweak the layout, save it in my home directory, and then use mutt. But Joe Office Worker is going to want to select the stuff, drag it to Word, save it (in My Documents, which is the only directory he's comfortable with, and tends to lose documents if he puts them elsewhere...and doesn't know how to use Find File), and drag that into Outlook.
My boss gets uncomfortable when his *icons* move around from the locations he's comfortable with. Anecdotal evidence of the abilities of a Slashdot reader simply aren't relevant to what's best for the mass of humanity. I wasn't asking whether *you* can comfortably do that -- that gets reserved for discussions over whether AfterStep or fvwm has a better config file format. I'm talking about the masses.
I'm really not a Microsoft fan in the least. I don't use their products on my own computer (well, win32 codecs loaded by mplayer are an exception, along with the excellent Verdana). However, these schoolchildren are very much different people than you or I, and I don't think it's fair to hurt them because we happen to like Linux. The overwhelming majority of them are not going to be sysadmins, coders, or techies, and really don't care about any type of ideological revolution. They *are*, however, much more likely to have to use products identical to or very similar to Microsoft's products. Whether or not they will KWord or Open Office on the job is much more debatable. I think that the best thing for the *students* should be done.
One would think that, since ads are so helpful to them, they'd put ads on the printer-friendly version as well and solve the problem.
I mean, a link is nothing more than the electronic equivalent of Joe Smith saying to Dan Ross "Hey, I know where you can pick up a nice, ad-free newspaper." If the newspaper company is making them available, I don't think Joe Smith should be liable.
The people pushing for this damn idiot legislation have said essentially "I am a company. I've heard that the Web is a good place to make money. Damn, it doesn't *actually* seem to fit my business model well. I should push for legislation to allow my business model to work."
I remember a quote along the lines of "companies do not have a n inalienable right to make money". The idea, the whole point of a free market, is that companies are forced to adapt to the market. People are using a medium that allows deep linking. Trying to prevent something that is technically quite feasable with legal bullshit (and not a lawsuit, which would be fine -- an attempt to *push* new legislation to try to warp the Web into something that they can more easily cope with) like this is quite annoying.
I've seen this argument time and time again, but it falls flat on it's MS Luddite
A little harsh, wouldn't you say?
face because even MS alters their own products considerably with each release (especially the user interface). And all that your argument points too is the difference in interface.
Sure, they change. But Office 2k and Office XP differ less in UI and approach than KWord and Office XP or AbiWord/Office XP, or Open Office and Office XP.
It really isn't about the interface, it is about the task. Every word processor has the ability to change the page margins, and the interface to do so changes with each iteration of MS's Word. Funny how those legions of pathetic, unteachable masses are able to adapt to every new release of MS Word, but none of them would be able to figure out how to change their page margins if they had previously been using OpenOffice. I DON'T THINK SO!
Well, the interface to do so differs more from Office to other packages than Office v.Foo to Office v.Bar.
That's also a fairly trivial item that's similar between the two. What about importing data from a spreadsheet. What about how/where to save files, and what names you can use. What about whether open files can be deleted? That's off the top of my head...there are lots of quirks in an MS system. If a user is likely to have to interact with an MS system, knowing how to deal with one is valuable. I came from the Mac, which actually maintains proper metadate on files -- the whole idea of file associations on Windows seems marvously inane to me, and something that I had to adapt to. Yet it's something that, sure enough, I had to learn to deal with.
Slashdot Mirror
Comic Sans MS is actually, IMHO, rather impressive. There aren't many non-traditional fonts that you can reasonably use for body text...this is one.
I've taken a look at this. It's just not done yet, though it's certainly the furthest along effort.
It also isn't bundled by many distros, so not many people have a copy, which means that a lot of people that could be working on it aren't.
Other than the fact that Apple have released very little stuff they developed themselves, they'd have been better off giving FreeType an unlimited license to TrueType hinting, instead of forcing them to develop an auto-hinter. It wouldn't have even cost anything, I don't know how much they make out of these royalties but I doubt it's much. Yet they do not.
Almost certainly little or nothing. MS already has an unlimited license. However, it has a good deal of worth to Apple in that it adds value to their system in the publishing field -- higher quality font rendering. It's a lovely barrier to entry, and gives Apple an excellent leg up over its competitors (BSD, Linux, etc). I doubt Apple will be giving out licenses any time soon.
I like to see the 2 desktop projects recognize their mutual needs and their mutual strengths.
Contrast Gettys' attitude to that of Mosfet...
I'll give a good guess that (assuming these are TrueType) that the guy is using a stock binary release of FreeType, which has part of the hinting system disabled to avoid patent issues.
I'd like to see a screenshot from someone who's flipped it on.
Not that I'm complaining... the more fonts the better!!!
I have to say that what Linux really needs is a free top-notch vector font editor, something along the lines of Fontographer. Look at what happened to graphics and icons in interfaces after the GIMP stablized -- they vastly improved. There are a lot of people who'd be willing to "debug" odd spacing in fonts or make fonts *if* they had good tools to do it.
The problem is that this is a pretty non-trivial problem (hell, there isn't even a comprehensive general vector graphics program yet, much less a specialized one).
Something that can let people hand-hint fonts comes out...and instead of recieving a single fish, we can catch our own.
For publicity or for common good?
:-)
I doubt it's because of similar ideology.
"Setting the standard for excellence in font technology, Bitstream
holds numerous key patents in the U.S. that cover the
creation of portable fonts for the Internet. Building
on this experience, Bitstream has released
ThunderHawk, a breakthrough technology for the
wireless Web."
Not a big deal right now, but I see friction in the upcoming years as more people come in contact with the Open Source world and cultures clash -- the current corporate view of intellectual property and legal systems for supporting it in the United States don't fit very well with it...
Ah, well. I shouldn't be such a downer right after such a good event. Thank you, Bitstream!
I hope not. Java has tons of problems, but the primary alternative is a MS-controlled language/toolkit/library set.
It's okay. MS is putting all those complex technologies into rendering the current Start Menu.
Blocking outbound will also prevent any open relays on their network from going off their network; it is then an internal affair which they can clean up, without getting onto blackhole lists or bothering anyone else.
And how does this differ from inbound? Again, not that I think that *inbound* blocking is a good idea -- simply that proposing 25 outbound instead of inbound is nuts.
DNS is inherently hierarchical.
But DNS does not have a single tree, and I can choose to use it or not. IP should not become dependent upon the workings of a single DNS tree. We were *just* talking about the fallibility of DNS, so reliability is an issue. In addition, the reason I consider the current DNS system acceptable is because people can choose to use it or not. No one has to accept the desires of a single "Internet czar". You are proposing to make IP do exactly this, for the first time *ever*, because you find it a quicker temporary fix than whitelists.
Note that what I'm suggesting is more to move mail clients to use the MSA port (587) instead of the SMTP port, and get everyone to send e-mail by routing it through the "proper" mail server, so that accountability and authentication can be maintained.
I completely disagree with you that there is a "proper" mail server, or a "proper" DNS server to use. That idea is completely foreign to the Internet.
I don't accept a solution of only accepting mail from people I have authorized. I don't have a master list of everyone I'd accept mail from. Doing it by having a list of certifying authorities that I'll accept regardless is even more restrictive than what I'm suggesting.
Yes, because you just suggested a system that makes the following bogus assumptions to *function*:
* Everyone will adopt it. Zero spam reduction benefit unless everyone implements it.
* *All* networks have a network admin with time to watch for any of their users beginning to spam and take action and have anti-spam policies in place. Any mail server admin is considered trusted. Any violation of this assumption worldwide breaks your model.
* No one will be negatively impacted by it -- they should interact with the network in the same way you do, the "proper" way. Hence, no one will start tunneling around it.
First everyone sending mail directly, or through the "wrong" mail server, have to be persuaded to start doing it the "right" way.
What you are calling "wrong" is not only legitimate and traditional (UNIX machines running a mail server themselves), but has significant functionality benefits (transient machines don't have to change gateways around, unsendable reporting is quicker and configurable).
Then anyone who complains about receiving SPAM from your network, that didn't go through your mail server, can be simply told to fix their mail server.
And many people, like me, will tell you to go soak your head.
I just can't understand why no one gets this. The security of the model you are proposing is almost nonexistant. A spammer can move to an ISP that doesn't care about it, exploit any "trusted" machine that has a mail server with an admin that doesn't immediately clamp down. It *will not provide a benefit*. It *will* be a complete pain in the ass to those of us that *do* use the features that you're trying to eliminate.
This sounds like the firewall argument. IT types *looove* blocking every port imagineable and never taking a look *inside* the network because it's much easier for them. Of course, that just means that hackers shift to other weak points (say, mass-send an email with an executable attachment telling users to run it...and once inside the network, they run rampant, making it *incredibly* difficult to clean it out again). It's really easy to block a port. It's really hard to do things properly.
The old model is a good one, well designed for the environment in which it was made, which is where all users are trusted. Your model is a lousy one, because it tries to make a minimal number of changes, breaks a number of features, and provides essentially zero benefits over the good one. (Want an example? It tries to block open relays from being exploited -- despite *years* of RBL/etc blocking, spam *still* pours into inboxes at an increasing rate, and this will get a subset of that, since RBL is pretty good at finding open relays). *Any* move to fix things should be to a new, good model -- which almost certainly entails whitelists.
Hmm...that's true. I didn't bother to think through the statement which the author had on his page:
LZO and the LZO algorithms and implementations are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) { auf Deutsch }. Special licenses for commercial and other applications are available by contacting the author.
The bit about the algorithms is presumably bogus, then.
Ooh, I want in too! I can make a precatching web proxy, bundle an IE wrapper, and speed up the Web! All I need is lots and lots of venture capital, oh, and no details available to let people tear me to shreds. Heck, I'm older than this 16-year-old -- I should be *rolling* in reputability.
I'll bet you some fool gets parted from his money, though. People have invested in every high tech scam ever tried, especially if the media reports it. Awful.
Blocking OUTbound port 25 allows an ISP to control SPAM coming from their ports, without blocking people from using any MSA they want
A spammer can choose their ISP. They cannot choose the ISP that an open relay is running. If an ISP blocks outbound 25, it's an attempt to block a spammer from operating directly from an ISP. They simply move to another ISP. Piece of cake, throwaway account. OTOH, if an ISP blocks inbound 25, they immediately prevent any of their systems from being used as open relays. The open relays on their network will not move around.
The success of a block-outbound-25 system requires near-absolute, 99% of all Internet addresses having 25 outbound blocked. In the meantime, you get no benefit in reduction of spam, because spammers simply shift around to avoid blocks, and everyone *still* gets the same amount of spam in their in box.
Also, when I'm talking about authentication, I'm talking about client-level. If I only accept valid PGP-signed messages from people I want to get mail from (and if I want to recieve mail from anywhere in the company, I just choose to trust the company master signing cert), then I don't ever have problems with this.
Eventually, the block on port 25 can be dropped, as anyone trying to send mail by connecting directly to an SMTP server will be rejected since the MX records don't match.
I really dislike this. The Internet has always been, and is in its very structure peer-based. Even DNS is like this -- I can use a different DNS root if I want to (as a matter of fact, I did for some time). This is an attempt to move IP itself to become hierarchical, to depend upon a single DNS system, and to have "special" hosts. I claim that most of the people doing this are not considering the implications -- I suspect someong bringing this up somewhere like NANOG would get laughed down.
If I am a peer on the Internet, I should have the rights and privileges accorded other peers. No more, no less. If the *only* way to solve the spam problem was to alter the structure of the Internet, then I suppose that that would have to be done, but outbound 25 blocking is no more necessary that mandatory DRM on devices or other bad-idea short term fixes.
A system based on outbound 25 blocking and MX lookups requires *every* mail server admin to be alert and constantly on the lookout for anyone abusing their server. It requires *all* ISPs to participate. I claim that such a system is unworkable.
Open file formats and open standards means that the kids data (or data on the kids, such as transcripts and so forth) will not be locked in to a specific vendor.
This is true, and a good point. I'd point out that it's a bit lessened, since schools tend to upgrade less frequently than, say, a business might -- my guidance counselors used terminal-based software that was probably at least ten years old, and I don't think they've upgraded it -- it works for what they need to do. Also, they tend to need to do less data manipulation than a business might do on customer information, so it may be less of a benefit than one might expect. However, this is still quite true. Along the same lines, *one day* the data will be moved to a newer system, and when that happens, if the source is around, it will likely be easier to migrate, even if the original vendor is defunct by then.
Source availability means the school can customize the software if needed.
It's not impossible, but I'd have to say that I think most schools are unlikely to do this.
TCO. 'nuff said? Microsoft-funded studies to the contrary, there's plenty of other case evidence of free software having a lower TCO than Windows.
Good point. I'd suggest that rather than reducing TCO, however (regardless of what happens, I suspect that my high school will probably never get more or less than one tech person working at the school), it probably frees up more time for the sole techie, which means more time available for other things. I'm also not entirely sure what the situation is with low-end Linux system administration -- conventional wisdom has said for a while that UNIX sysadmins are harder to find and more costly (a serious issue for most schools) than someone who can handle a Windows network.
Adopting free software means that lower-income families that are likely to have donated computers (or computers as gifts) if they have one at all will be able to use the same software that is used in the school. Locking them in to a specific vendor's proprietary software could create an "economically oppressive" situation.
Hmm. This is a new idea, and I personally think the best. A student can work at home or at school. If they work with a piece of software, they can "just download it" legally to use elsewhere.
Good chatting with you.
LZO is even worse than GIF in terms of IP entanglement.
I think the GPL is nice and all, but trying to force it on people by using formats that cannot be used with non-GPL software freely is no better than what Microsoft does with propriatary protocols.
I want Open Source to win because it's *better*, not because some jerk is trying to use nasty tactics against people using an alternative.
It was one of the best motivators for technological improvement ever. PNG is better than GIF for almost *all* images except *extremely* small images, like those one-pixel spacers that people used to use.
Unfortunately, while PNG is now *used*, it still isn't as common as it should be.
No you can't. Your ISP hasn't set up an MX for any of its dialup IPs, so that mail addy is invalid. may as well use a@b.com
:-) Yay UNIX legacy issues.
Yes, but most mail servers will happily deliver directly to a machine if there's no MX address present. I've done this many times.
As well they should. dialup space is a great source of questionable email and blocking it saves everybody a big headache.
It may well be a great source of questionable email, but blocking it sporadically does *not* save headaches. You have spammers that will happily get broadband or an overseas shell account, worms that simply use the local mailserver and people that break into machines to use them and sending stations to amplify mail. Since little spam is sent *directly* from dialup accounts and worms account for the majority of at least *my* spam, this buys nothing for anyone. It *does* become a royal pain in the ass for those of us that *do* have good reasons for running a mail server on our machines (in my case, because I switch from my home to college ISP to Verizon frequently and it's a PITA to keep updating my mail server's gateway (which means a few days of bounced mail) and because I get bounced mail back much more quickly), and it's a pain for customer support.
Ahhh...I see. I hadn't read the advisory -- I had thought that people were amplifying their attack off of the *meta*servers, not the servers. That makes more sense.
I certainly don't disagree with this, but I don't see how it applies to GNU/Linux in schools. Learning how to use a GUI is the same regardless of what kind they learn on. In my old high school they installed Macs to replace the old AMOS network they had. This didn't hurt the kids.
:) (I'm willing to pursue it, though)
:-)
Sure, but that's also very different from moving from Windows to Linux. AMOS-to-Mac is moving towards a system that's more likely to be used by students after school. The same currently goes for Mac-to-Windows.
With GNU/Linux, you also have a completely scalable educational opportunity. If the kid wants to learn just basic shit that the class offers, fine. But no matter how deeply into the innards the kid wants to go, he can, with GNU/Linux. With Windows the educator eventually has to say "Sorry, it's not possible to know that unless you work for Microsoft."
I'd say that there are side benefits for each. People into operating system internals in computer science class can derive a good deal of benefit from using Linux -- it's a good start, and many of the Linux kernel hackers are quite young. Fair enough. But I claim that this is also a relatively small group. There are other side benefits that swing in favor of Windows -- in physics class, we had all sorts of devices with Windows-only controller software. There was a good deal of general-purpose Windows-only educational software (granted, there's at least one Linux project to collect educational software together, but it simply doesn't compare to the offerings for Windows).
Child psychology teaches us that the kid will choose the environment they want to live in based solely on what's available, and using Windows automatically limits them based on arbitrary Intellectual Property restrictions. GNU/Linux makes any computing environment available for the kids.
[shrug] I could as easily say that Linux limits the computing environment. Is the school going to allow people to install arbitrary software on the system? My school certainly didn't, and that was in Windows.
This is true, so far as it goes. However, schools are already used as a platform to condition kids to a political opinion. In my experience, using GNU/Linux as a tool to help them teach the kids about freedom would actually be contrary to what the schools already teach them. This is a subject for a different forum, though.
I've heard a lot of people say that it tries to make the status quo more acceptable -- I'm somewhat dubious. Yes, this does happen for part of school, but I also had a history textbook that panned our actions at the beginning of both the Spanish-American and Mexican-American wars, Panama, and our motives in WWII. I suppose that a common educational ground tends to homogenize cultures and opinions, but I don't think it's to the degree that some of the conspiracy theorists claim.
The answer to that question, based on existing implementations, is that OpenOffice.org is sufficient to teach them how to use a word processor and spreadsheet.
Sure, but so is MS Office. And one of them also familiarizes them with software that they're likely to use. I mean, you could teach driver's ed based on British traffic laws too, and it wouldn't be that hard to learn the minor differences. And for a few, this is beneficial, since they end up moving to Britain. But for most people, the familiarity with the local laws tends to be a benefit.
Fact is, an artist will naturally prefer one over the other as a basic mindset issue, but after achieving proficiency with either of them will likely find that they're both excellent tools.
I suppose in the long run, though I've seen at least three people that started out with Painter instead of Photoshop, and as a result use Painter for even retouching work, where Photoshop is probably a better tool. I'm not claiming that Open Office is bad, just that it's a worse choice for the kids in this situation.
Public schools (I realize the article is about a private school) should be more focussed on teaching the kids the concepts behind the software, because the education will be more portable when they can use their existing education (based on concepts) to learn a different implementation of those concepts.
Oooh, didn't notice it was about a private school. Ah, well. Most points still apply.
MS Office can be used as a platform to teach the same concepts, though.
This is, of course, the reason we learn how to do long-hand division even though a calculator does it much quicker
A bit OT, but I like it. While this is true, it's also not the whole story. At one point, everyone learned to calculate square roots by hand. My mother certainly did, but I didn't. What caused this? The advent of the calculator. A whole set of problems that people now are not taught how to solve in their heads because they have a device that's almost always easy to hand that can do the same thin better.
We're already getting this one day of classtime learning about freedom, and as a result we now live in a society that values safety over freedom. So I ask you, have we done all that we can? Should we do more? How about the blatant hypocrisy of teaching kids about "taxation without representation" and then paying the "Microsoft tax" so that they can learn how to use windows?
This is true -- there are things I don't like about our society -- but neither is it the whole story. We are still, despite having lost some ground, a very free society relative to the overwhelming majority of the world. Furthermore, I don't see Linux as being all that crucial to convincing people that privacy should sometimes be valued over safety.
This is a human problem for which I have no solution.
I wasn't trying to criticize you -- I do the same thing. I'm just trying to point out that the Linux cause that seems so noble to us is trivial to many other people -- and that if you objectify things by looking at something other than Linux, it really can seem trivial to us as well. Would it be great if Linux became the dominant OS? Almost certainly. Is it within the realm of the school's responsibility to detract from it's students chances because officials at that school want to contribute to that cause? I cannot agree. If you want to donate time and teach a free Linux class, you donate your own time. That's something that you can ethically give. But if you take a more practically useful set of experiences from your children, and give them a weaker set, all to contribute to your cause...that I cannot agree with. And that seems, on the face of it, to be what this administrator is doing, and what some of the other posters are supporting.
It's not that Open Office and MS Office are so drastically different. They aren't, really. There aren't that many tasks, at least at the basic level, that you *cannot* accomplish with the other.
I'm not saying that a person should "learn MS Office". I'm with the many other posters that "learning word processing" skills is what's important. However, when the students leave this school, they're going to be more familiar with whatever software package they're using. Are they going to be unable to figure out how to do something in another package, given enough time, and maybe a bit of help from someone else? Probably not. Someone that learned MS Office is not going to be "doomed to never use Office". But in the package that they *have* been working with they are faster, much more facile at performing tasks, and less likely to get hung up on quirks or non-intuitive bits of a given package. So my argument is that since they *are* going to be familizarized with one, the package that they are most likely to end up using should be the one that they should be familiarized with.
In another post, I mentioned my having watched Microstation guru move to AutoCAD. It's quite doable -- you're still doing the same task with a similar tool. But it really does take a long time to become as zippy in AutoCAD as in Microstation -- those years of learning Microstation inside out really add up.
I can move from bash to zsh, too. A *lot* of work has gone into making them operate very similarly, and be compatible. But I still ran into hangups for a good year after doing the switch (at first, how to colorize my prompt in my new shell, then how to make tab completion act similarly, etc). And a shell is really pretty straightforward compared to an office suite.
Not at all. My dictionary says that a Luddite is "an opponent of technological progress". Specifically, your argument is laced with a rather vague fear of a future without the MS tit.
Nope. My argument isn't based on whether MS will be *around*, it's whether being familiar with MS Office or a similar Linux app is better for the students.
Even though I've never imported data into a spreadsheet, your description of the task of importing data was enough for me to be able to figure it out.
Uh, huh. Now go find your average, non-techie person. Someone who's used Word at some point before. Plonk them in front of your Linux box. Given that same information, have them fire up Open Office and do a couple of the tasks that seem so trivial to you. Say, copy some formatted data from a web page. Save the file. Send it to a Windows user via email. Sure, I'm more than happy to wget an HTML file, hand edit out the unnecessary crap, import it to the word processor, tweak the layout, save it in my home directory, and then use mutt. But Joe Office Worker is going to want to select the stuff, drag it to Word, save it (in My Documents, which is the only directory he's comfortable with, and tends to lose documents if he puts them elsewhere...and doesn't know how to use Find File), and drag that into Outlook.
My boss gets uncomfortable when his *icons* move around from the locations he's comfortable with. Anecdotal evidence of the abilities of a Slashdot reader simply aren't relevant to what's best for the mass of humanity. I wasn't asking whether *you* can comfortably do that -- that gets reserved for discussions over whether AfterStep or fvwm has a better config file format. I'm talking about the masses.
I'm really not a Microsoft fan in the least. I don't use their products on my own computer (well, win32 codecs loaded by mplayer are an exception, along with the excellent Verdana). However, these schoolchildren are very much different people than you or I, and I don't think it's fair to hurt them because we happen to like Linux. The overwhelming majority of them are not going to be sysadmins, coders, or techies, and really don't care about any type of ideological revolution. They *are*, however, much more likely to have to use products identical to or very similar to Microsoft's products. Whether or not they will KWord or Open Office on the job is much more debatable. I think that the best thing for the *students* should be done.
Gnutella (at least traditionally) used only TCP. I'm thinking that they're talking about something higher-level, if this talk was a full year ago.
One would think that, since ads are so helpful to them, they'd put ads on the printer-friendly version as well and solve the problem.
I mean, a link is nothing more than the electronic equivalent of Joe Smith saying to Dan Ross "Hey, I know where you can pick up a nice, ad-free newspaper." If the newspaper company is making them available, I don't think Joe Smith should be liable.
TBL is a techie.
The people pushing for this damn idiot legislation have said essentially "I am a company. I've heard that the Web is a good place to make money. Damn, it doesn't *actually* seem to fit my business model well. I should push for legislation to allow my business model to work."
I remember a quote along the lines of "companies do not have a n inalienable right to make money". The idea, the whole point of a free market, is that companies are forced to adapt to the market. People are using a medium that allows deep linking. Trying to prevent something that is technically quite feasable with legal bullshit (and not a lawsuit, which would be fine -- an attempt to *push* new legislation to try to warp the Web into something that they can more easily cope with) like this is quite annoying.
I've seen this argument time and time again, but it falls flat on it's MS Luddite
A little harsh, wouldn't you say?
face because even MS alters their own products considerably with each release (especially the user interface). And all that your argument points too is the difference in interface.
Sure, they change. But Office 2k and Office XP differ less in UI and approach than KWord and Office XP or AbiWord/Office XP, or Open Office and Office XP.
It really isn't about the interface, it is about the task. Every word processor has the ability to change the page margins, and the interface to do so changes with each iteration of MS's Word. Funny how those legions of pathetic, unteachable masses are able to adapt to every new release of MS Word, but none of them would be able to figure out how to change their page margins if they had previously been using OpenOffice. I DON'T THINK SO!
Well, the interface to do so differs more from Office to other packages than Office v.Foo to Office v.Bar.
That's also a fairly trivial item that's similar between the two. What about importing data from a spreadsheet. What about how/where to save files, and what names you can use. What about whether open files can be deleted? That's off the top of my head...there are lots of quirks in an MS system. If a user is likely to have to interact with an MS system, knowing how to deal with one is valuable. I came from the Mac, which actually maintains proper metadate on files -- the whole idea of file associations on Windows seems marvously inane to me, and something that I had to adapt to. Yet it's something that, sure enough, I had to learn to deal with.