ZapMe! (Stupid exclamation point) has has a controlling percentage of their shares bought by r)star (stupid parenthesis) networks, a satellite broadband provider. They no longer pursue the educational service, they provide net access.
People will buy it (I will buy it when it releases) because it's small, it's fast, and it does it's job VERY well. In addition, Qt aside, Troll is still a Linux company, and I think if a product comes out that I can use and that isn't proced too high, I will buy it. I'm going to buy Neverwinter Nights (is that the right game?) when it comes out. I don't have much time for games, but I want the industry to know that people will buy the software if it's good (not Windows), it's reasonably priced (not Office), and serves a useful purpose (well, OK, but 2 out of 3 good...and stress relief is a purpose!).
I played with the Windows version when Opera 3.x matured, and I had to drag my whole group over to watch things load. You'd be surprised how fast the net really is when the rendering doesn't have to go through 10 bazillion lines of code to get to the screen. Mozilla was 10 times better than NS on that account, but since Opera didn't do Java internally, didn't hook directly into your mail and new clients internally, didn't support 8000 directory search functions in the address book internally, and generally kept it's footprint down, I could have carried the install file around on a floppy disk, and installed it in something like 5M of disk space.
Besides, what about in a ThinClient environment where the entire application resides on a server somewhere and all you see is a web frontend. Or Kiosks on small embedded systems? You'd rather install the Netscape beast than something as small as possible? There are many uses for a small fast browser that warrant paying for it.
I have the right to make copies of any music I own, in whatever format I choose, for whatever personal use I see fit.
The same applies to anyone else who owns a CD, tape, or vinyl.
If I own Bubba Jones's Greatest Hits on CD, and so does my friend Joe, what is illegal about giving the MP3 that I ripped from my CD to him? He could have just as easily ripped it himself; he has the exact same media that I have. What's the difference?
This is all that MP3.com is doing. They buy one CD (according to the testimony I've read) and rip the contents. Then they make that data streamable. In addition, they keep a number of bit-sample checksums on the server to verify media. On the user end, you pop a CD in, and Beam-it compares your bit-saples to the samples they have on their end. If they match, they you're granted access to the MP3's from that CD. No unauthorized duplication, no savable data, nothing.
Why give 4 aliases? Unless they've changed their computer systems in the last year or so, none of the stores are linked to a central database of customers...even within the same town.
The point isn't using the server to run apps, the cool part of this is this:
I work in one physical location. Work work work work oops, problem at our data center. Start problem analyzer, leave running. Yank smart card from terminal, all logged out. Drive to data center. Plug smart card back in. *poof* There's my screen again, with all the stuff I was running when I left my office. In the meantime, someone comes to my office area to visit. Needs computer access. Pull out hte guest SmartCard, pop it into the terminal on my desk, and *poof* again, new login session.
This kinda stuff is very idea for extremely-thin client stuff, and for your typical sysadmin who really doesn't _need_ a PC cause all the work is done on the remote servers anyway...all he really needs is an X display.
As far as using cheap PC's...the list price for these things, IIRC, is about $500, monitor not included. I dunno if you can put a respectable workstation together for $500 anymore (Celeron's notwithstanding, I hate lobotomized processors).
You should have paid attention to the tech specs, or asked more questions....
That's not Ethernet running out of there. Well, it's Ethernet hardware, but it's a proprietary transport. The abstraction necessary to get such a setup working is not anywhere close to being implemented. The entire Sound and Vidoe format is rewritten to be abstracted from the actual display/audio hardware. It works something like this, though I'm not sure of the "real" details....
X Framebuffer/Sound buffer --> Abstraction layer --> Session Manager --> Transport driver --> SunRay --> Abstraction realizer --> Display Hardware
We probably have the working of the display and sound abstractors (Virtual Framebuffers and the architecture of ESound), but the rest will all have to be implemented. The speed form the thing comes from the fact that all of the abstraction/encoding/decoding is done in hardware. Software abstraction and realization will be VERY slow and prohibitive of just running cheap standalone Linux systems.
In addition, the packages to make the server a SunRay server change the session management of the processes run by a user, in that it needs to be able to intelligently stop and start (not kill and restart) processes as displays attach and reattach, and handle extended swapping and reallocating of resources. The fact that it's a smartcard controlling it is trivial compared to the engineering needed to get the process working. For tha tmatter, you can just encode a small PAM module that lives on the client to authenticate by fingerprints, voice, or whatever
But the software and drivers support OTHER "Cue"'s. If you want to write a driver to interpret audio Cue's from your TV, that's possible too (not that I can find a list of Cue-enabled TV shows anywhere).
This is just a load of crap to make us have our uses of the codes tracked.
Then you didn't set it up right.
Running a box properly required you to be informed about security vulnerabilities that are discovered. Just like Windows - the patches don't apply themselves...
VRML died because in order to be interesting, the descriptor files were HUGE (I had a playfile that comtained a the ground, a floor, kneeler wall, columns, and a flat roof to a free-standing pagoda-type thing with a few scene lights so you could see it....very basic, no detail, and the file was something like 200K. And lets not forget how long it tool my P166 to render the scene...
VRML came ont he scene too soon...before high bandwidth, before everyone had a fast computer, before it was practical to use...that's why you don't see it any more...though I still play with is sometimes...
...you would see that it disallows any of these services for use as a business. This means you can't:
Set up a business web server. You can run a personal web server.
Offer free Email as a side job. You can receive your Email on your own mailserver though.
Start up MyLittleVPN.Com and set up a distributed network. Though this point bothers me becuase I use RoadRunner to connect to my work from home with a VPN client.
Any of these services, for your own use to show to the public, as far as I read it, are completely valid uses. Just rip down your banner ads et al and you're fine.
Wasn't linking already taken to court and the decision was made that linking in and of itself is not a copyright violation, even if the material linked to is?
At the school I went to, the computer labs were staffed and managed all by students. The Student managers for the 11 labs reported to one of 3 staff people who were in the Information Management department. Outside of that, there were 3 or 4 student technicians who floated around to all the labs to fix various problems.
I managed for a year, and ran as a floating tech for a year, and we had very little 'interference' from our staff supervisors. THe managers even had almost-complete (read as: everything except things dealing with administration rules and such) control over things like hiring new staff people. As far as the techs, we worked out of the office with the staff people, and ocassionally had tasks prioritized by them (you _have_ to get these upgrades done before the rest of that stuff), but for all intents and purposes, all 11 of our labs (comprising something like 400 computers and workstations) were student-run.
At the last place I worked for, we got a new slew of management when they realigned the technology departments. One of the questions asked was if Technical people could still expect to get raises when they were making quite a bit of money, had been there for quite a few years, but did not want to move into management. The response was yes, and that if people wouldn't be comfortable in amangement, even if it was thought they would be good management material, they wouldn't be pushed in because they would perform better in a job they liked than a job they didn't.
Mention this to your manaager the next time you talk with him or that he brings up the possibility. Explain that you enjoy working as a Techie, and fel you contribute more from a technical standpoint than from a managerial one. If he's a good manager he'll understand you're better off where you're happy than where the company PHB's think you'd be happy.
No, you wouldn't be attacked for what you know, you would be attacked for violating an agreement, which you did agree to if you clicked that YES button, that explicitly forbids you to disseminate this information.
It's called Corporate Law, and while all the kiddies out there may not understand it, it's Trade Secrets and such that have created competition and let this free market thing flourish. If you want a part of the market company A has, but they have a Trade Secret, you will come up with something to beat it.
Quit whining about people coming after you when, if you could read, you'd know exactly why Microsoft would be well within it's right to throw your luser butts in the pokey for a few years. Open Source is nice, but it doesn't supercede the law.
The posts with the text of the pdf file are in violation of the copyright. They should be removed, and if Microsoft so wishes, their identities made available to the legal department for the purposes of pursuing other legal action against them.
The Courts have already ruled that Hyperlinks are not aplicable for copyright infringement (regardless of what the DeCSS people think). If someone has a link to the document off-site, leave it up.
As far as the " How To Extract " examples, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse-engineering for the purposes of interoperability. In this case, the packaging has been reverse-engineered in order to obtain the inner workings of the package (the specifications). To hell with the DMCA, if they want to flaunt it for the first case, you should use it for the last.
I have to agree with the comments about using " Kerberos " to describe the protocol, though. I know Kerberos is registered by someone (UCBerkeley? Or Bell/AT&T?). The copyright owner needs to pursue a copyright infringement suit contending dilution of the Name Recognition and Product. While it may look like Kerberos, the is definitely not, and should not be labeled as such.
Regarding the "All PCI modems are WinModems" comment above...
Go read through the list of known modems on LinModems and find the line that says there are 3 PCI hardware modems in existence that work with Linux. I don't know them off the top of my head, but I know they are named in there.
The fact of the matter is, you don't _have_ to be warned about it with a logon banner every time you log on. If you missed that meeting where they handed out this year's policy book, or your's is sitting in the bottom of your drawer, or there's a central repository of documents at your company....or even if none of this exists, the legal precenent is that employers have every right to invade every "privacy" you think you have at work. Basically, when it comes down to it, you have no provacy at work.
Agreed....I used to use Slackware when I started, for the very reason you'd be interested it in; it's a base install. The only thing I didn't like about it was it used tgz tarballs for all it's packages, but you could read through/var/sadm to find out what was there.
I recently switched to SuSE, but only becuase I'm ont at school any more with a T1 line at my disposal to downoad packages any time I need them...SuSE has the ability to go the other way...with 6 CD's of software (6.3), I generally don't need to hit the net to download new packages for months after I install a new version, and when I do, it's generally updates or such.
LILO still boots Linux off of MS-DOS style partitions because it's designed to boot OS's that only read those partitions. What good would it do to fdisk the disk in slices unless that's the only thing you're going to do with the disk. Windows, DOS, et al won't even recognize those disks as formatted.
If you want something better, you can look into System Commander. For what LILO does, it does it fast, well, and small. To tell me how much space System Commander takes up on your disk to be able to run bootloaders for all the OS's it does....
I believe this topic has already beed covered with regards to USENET.
You chosing to post differently if you knew you were going to be in a book is exactly why these comments need to be in the book. Just as anonymity allows people to speak more freely, having a target audience that you associate with also allows you to express yourself better. If people had to phrase what they were trying to say in order to be what they consider " publishable" , the message would not have been as clear and emotional.
If the posts weren't intended to be, at the very least, massively reproduced on thousands upon thousands of monitors around the world as we read the comments on Slashdot, they shouldnt' have been posted here.
I have to agree with a comment I saw earlier...these posts are important. Important enough that they need to be seen by people other than the choir. If that means Rob has to give his permission to pull content from/. to Jon to assist in the publishing of a book about a topic I think everyone with a voting voice in this country should at least skim over, then bring on the printing presses, and if you need help, I'll fire up a few copy machines at my house....
Slashdot Mirror
ZapMe! (Stupid exclamation point) has has a controlling percentage of their shares bought by r)star (stupid parenthesis) networks, a satellite broadband provider. They no longer pursue the educational service, they provide net access.
People will buy it (I will buy it when it releases) because it's small, it's fast, and it does it's job VERY well. In addition, Qt aside, Troll is still a Linux company, and I think if a product comes out that I can use and that isn't proced too high, I will buy it. I'm going to buy Neverwinter Nights (is that the right game?) when it comes out. I don't have much time for games, but I want the industry to know that people will buy the software if it's good (not Windows), it's reasonably priced (not Office), and serves a useful purpose (well, OK, but 2 out of 3 good...and stress relief is a purpose!).
I played with the Windows version when Opera 3.x matured, and I had to drag my whole group over to watch things load. You'd be surprised how fast the net really is when the rendering doesn't have to go through 10 bazillion lines of code to get to the screen. Mozilla was 10 times better than NS on that account, but since Opera didn't do Java internally, didn't hook directly into your mail and new clients internally, didn't support 8000 directory search functions in the address book internally, and generally kept it's footprint down, I could have carried the install file around on a floppy disk, and installed it in something like 5M of disk space.
Besides, what about in a ThinClient environment where the entire application resides on a server somewhere and all you see is a web frontend. Or Kiosks on small embedded systems? You'd rather install the Netscape beast than something as small as possible? There are many uses for a small fast browser that warrant paying for it.
Exactly what copyrights is MP3.com violating?
I have the right to make copies of any music I own, in whatever format I choose, for whatever personal use I see fit.
The same applies to anyone else who owns a CD, tape, or vinyl.
If I own Bubba Jones's Greatest Hits on CD, and so does my friend Joe, what is illegal about giving the MP3 that I ripped from my CD to him? He could have just as easily ripped it himself; he has the exact same media that I have. What's the difference?
This is all that MP3.com is doing. They buy one CD (according to the testimony I've read) and rip the contents. Then they make that data streamable. In addition, they keep a number of bit-sample checksums on the server to verify media. On the user end, you pop a CD in, and Beam-it compares your bit-saples to the samples they have on their end. If they match, they you're granted access to the MP3's from that CD. No unauthorized duplication, no savable data, nothing.
...that this guy thinks we're aliready computers and can easily scan 4-point text on a 21 inch monitor, and still comprehent what we're reading...
Anyone maintaining a mirror list? I will put up a site, since they apparently aren't answering requests for explanations of the C&D letters...
Why give 4 aliases? Unless they've changed their computer systems in the last year or so, none of the stores are linked to a central database of customers...even within the same town.
The point isn't using the server to run apps, the cool part of this is this:
I work in one physical location. Work work work work oops, problem at our data center. Start problem analyzer, leave running. Yank smart card from terminal, all logged out. Drive to data center. Plug smart card back in. *poof* There's my screen again, with all the stuff I was running when I left my office. In the meantime, someone comes to my office area to visit. Needs computer access. Pull out hte guest SmartCard, pop it into the terminal on my desk, and *poof* again, new login session.
This kinda stuff is very idea for extremely-thin client stuff, and for your typical sysadmin who really doesn't _need_ a PC cause all the work is done on the remote servers anyway...all he really needs is an X display.
As far as using cheap PC's...the list price for these things, IIRC, is about $500, monitor not included. I dunno if you can put a respectable workstation together for $500 anymore (Celeron's notwithstanding, I hate lobotomized processors).
You should have paid attention to the tech specs, or asked more questions....
That's not Ethernet running out of there. Well, it's Ethernet hardware, but it's a proprietary transport. The abstraction necessary to get such a setup working is not anywhere close to being implemented. The entire Sound and Vidoe format is rewritten to be abstracted from the actual display/audio hardware. It works something like this, though I'm not sure of the "real" details....
X Framebuffer/Sound buffer --> Abstraction layer --> Session Manager --> Transport driver --> SunRay --> Abstraction realizer --> Display Hardware
We probably have the working of the display and sound abstractors (Virtual Framebuffers and the architecture of ESound), but the rest will all have to be implemented. The speed form the thing comes from the fact that all of the abstraction/encoding/decoding is done in hardware. Software abstraction and realization will be VERY slow and prohibitive of just running cheap standalone Linux systems.
In addition, the packages to make the server a SunRay server change the session management of the processes run by a user, in that it needs to be able to intelligently stop and start (not kill and restart) processes as displays attach and reattach, and handle extended swapping and reallocating of resources. The fact that it's a smartcard controlling it is trivial compared to the engineering needed to get the process working. For tha tmatter, you can just encode a small PAM module that lives on the client to authenticate by fingerprints, voice, or whatever
If you get it figured out, more power to you :)
But the software and drivers support OTHER "Cue"'s. If you want to write a driver to interpret audio Cue's from your TV, that's possible too (not that I can find a list of Cue-enabled TV shows anywhere). This is just a load of crap to make us have our uses of the codes tracked.
Then you didn't set it up right. Running a box properly required you to be informed about security vulnerabilities that are discovered. Just like Windows - the patches don't apply themselves...
VRML died because in order to be interesting, the descriptor files were HUGE (I had a playfile that comtained a the ground, a floor, kneeler wall, columns, and a flat roof to a free-standing pagoda-type thing with a few scene lights so you could see it....very basic, no detail, and the file was something like 200K. And lets not forget how long it tool my P166 to render the scene...
VRML came ont he scene too soon...before high bandwidth, before everyone had a fast computer, before it was practical to use...that's why you don't see it any more...though I still play with is sometimes...
...you would see that it disallows any of these services for use as a business. This means you can't:
Any of these services, for your own use to show to the public, as far as I read it, are completely valid uses. Just rip down your banner ads et al and you're fine.
No, TrollTech is running the Linuxport of some little off-the-wall browser called Opera...maybe you've heard of it?
Wasn't linking already taken to court and the decision was made that linking in and of itself is not a copyright violation, even if the material linked to is?
At the school I went to, the computer labs were staffed and managed all by students. The Student managers for the 11 labs reported to one of 3 staff people who were in the Information Management department. Outside of that, there were 3 or 4 student technicians who floated around to all the labs to fix various problems.
I managed for a year, and ran as a floating tech for a year, and we had very little 'interference' from our staff supervisors. THe managers even had almost-complete (read as: everything except things dealing with administration rules and such) control over things like hiring new staff people. As far as the techs, we worked out of the office with the staff people, and ocassionally had tasks prioritized by them (you _have_ to get these upgrades done before the rest of that stuff), but for all intents and purposes, all 11 of our labs (comprising something like 400 computers and workstations) were student-run.
At the last place I worked for, we got a new slew of management when they realigned the technology departments. One of the questions asked was if Technical people could still expect to get raises when they were making quite a bit of money, had been there for quite a few years, but did not want to move into management. The response was yes, and that if people wouldn't be comfortable in amangement, even if it was thought they would be good management material, they wouldn't be pushed in because they would perform better in a job they liked than a job they didn't.
Mention this to your manaager the next time you talk with him or that he brings up the possibility. Explain that you enjoy working as a Techie, and fel you contribute more from a technical standpoint than from a managerial one. If he's a good manager he'll understand you're better off where you're happy than where the company PHB's think you'd be happy.
No, you wouldn't be attacked for what you know, you would be attacked for violating an agreement, which you did agree to if you clicked that YES button, that explicitly forbids you to disseminate this information.
It's called Corporate Law, and while all the kiddies out there may not understand it, it's Trade Secrets and such that have created competition and let this free market thing flourish. If you want a part of the market company A has, but they have a Trade Secret, you will come up with something to beat it.
Quit whining about people coming after you when, if you could read, you'd know exactly why Microsoft would be well within it's right to throw your luser butts in the pokey for a few years. Open Source is nice, but it doesn't supercede the law.
...don't put too much faith in this opinion :)
The posts with the text of the pdf file are in violation of the copyright. They should be removed, and if Microsoft so wishes, their identities made available to the legal department for the purposes of pursuing other legal action against them.
The Courts have already ruled that Hyperlinks are not aplicable for copyright infringement (regardless of what the DeCSS people think). If someone has a link to the document off-site, leave it up.
As far as the " How To Extract " examples, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse-engineering for the purposes of interoperability. In this case, the packaging has been reverse-engineered in order to obtain the inner workings of the package (the specifications). To hell with the DMCA, if they want to flaunt it for the first case, you should use it for the last.
I have to agree with the comments about using " Kerberos " to describe the protocol, though. I know Kerberos is registered by someone (UCBerkeley? Or Bell/AT&T?). The copyright owner needs to pursue a copyright infringement suit contending dilution of the Name Recognition and Product. While it may look like Kerberos, the is definitely not, and should not be labeled as such.
Regarding the "All PCI modems are WinModems" comment above...
Go read through the list of known modems on LinModems and find the line that says there are 3 PCI hardware modems in existence that work with Linux. I don't know them off the top of my head, but I know they are named in there.
The fact of the matter is, you don't _have_ to be warned about it with a logon banner every time you log on. If you missed that meeting where they handed out this year's policy book, or your's is sitting in the bottom of your drawer, or there's a central repository of documents at your company....or even if none of this exists, the legal precenent is that employers have every right to invade every "privacy" you think you have at work. Basically, when it comes down to it, you have no provacy at work.
Agreed....I used to use Slackware when I started, for the very reason you'd be interested it in; it's a base install. The only thing I didn't like about it was it used tgz tarballs for all it's packages, but you could read through /var/sadm to find out what was there.
I recently switched to SuSE, but only becuase I'm ont at school any more with a T1 line at my disposal to downoad packages any time I need them...SuSE has the ability to go the other way...with 6 CD's of software (6.3), I generally don't need to hit the net to download new packages for months after I install a new version, and when I do, it's generally updates or such.
LILO still boots Linux off of MS-DOS style partitions because it's designed to boot OS's that only read those partitions. What good would it do to fdisk the disk in slices unless that's the only thing you're going to do with the disk. Windows, DOS, et al won't even recognize those disks as formatted.
If you want something better, you can look into System Commander. For what LILO does, it does it fast, well, and small. To tell me how much space System Commander takes up on your disk to be able to run bootloaders for all the OS's it does....
I believe this topic has already beed covered with regards to USENET.
You chosing to post differently if you knew you were going to be in a book is exactly why these comments need to be in the book. Just as anonymity allows people to speak more freely, having a target audience that you associate with also allows you to express yourself better. If people had to phrase what they were trying to say in order to be what they consider " publishable" , the message would not have been as clear and emotional.
If the posts weren't intended to be, at the very least, massively reproduced on thousands upon thousands of monitors around the world as we read the comments on Slashdot, they shouldnt' have been posted here.
I have to agree with a comment I saw earlier...these posts are important. Important enough that they need to be seen by people other than the choir. If that means Rob has to give his permission to pull content from /. to Jon to assist in the publishing of a book about a topic I think everyone with a voting voice in this country should at least skim over, then bring on the printing presses, and if you need help, I'll fire up a few copy machines at my house....