It is legal to crack any encryption, depending on how you do it (some mechanisms will fall under a copyright violation; reverse engineering based on a faulty implementation is not). What is (potentially) illegal is what you do with the knowledge gained.
If you cracked 128-bit encryption of data in and out of an e-commerce web site, fine. Good Show. If you give the cracking software away, good show. GOOD sites, those who take responsibility for their own actions, will use that information to make their systems MORE secure -- they'll fix the problem, not hide behind the (non-existant) shield of legalize.
If you use that knowledge to collect information about shoppers, shopping habits, and (especially) credit card numbers, that's unethical.
If you give or sell that collected information out, that's illegal.
Similarly, using DeCSS to read dvd's in order to watch them on a system that hasn't "licensed" it is still legal (though the MPAA would like to say otherwise; they are wrong). Using DeCSS to make copies of DVD's to give away or sell to others is illegal. DeCSS should not be illegal just because the latter is possible; the DVD industry is really more fearful of the former -- they just want the money, and are trying to use the fear of "illegal" usage as a shock-tactic in order to make the former (a legal action) illegal as well.
DeCSS code remains under the licence that the code was originally released on. Just because the code was included in a public document does not make the code "public".
Code generated by reverse engineering is (legally) safer than code that is generated by looking at existing source codes. Code written while looking at existing code still falls under copyright. If it didn't, then the need to reverse engineer the IBMPC BIOS wouldn't have existed; Compaq could simply have implemented the code AS PUBLISHED by IBM (which IBM was required to do by their consent decree with DOJ).
If I remember right, DeCSS is released under GPL. If it is, then publishing the sources as part of the case documents still falls under the GPL's legalize; nothing in DeCSS has changed because the sources were published in a legal document. We can (and should) continue to distribute the code as much as we can, and get the MPAA to realize "the cats out of the bag and you can't stop it"; or at least get the courts to realize that. DeCSS was written legally, was distributed legally.
If it isn't "OpenSource", then writing a new CSS system by "looking at the DeCSS" code will still fall under copyright of DeCSS (NOT copyright of DVD/MPAA, which is what the MPAA claims).
At any rate, we need to fight this court case (as a community) for something far more important: corporations, like goverments, want any "threat" of misuse blocked as soon as they can. They want a "potential weapon" blocked, even for legal usage, merely because "illegal usage" is possible with the tool. The government keeps trying this with guns and encryption, corporations have now taken this tactic with MP3 and now DeCSS.
A tool that "may make illegal activity possible" should NEVER be made illegal in and of itself. The act of misuse is ALREADY illegal. Enforce that, but leave the rest of us to use the tool in a legal manner. And we need (in America) a BIG court case (yes, it'll have to hit the Supreme Court) to get this legal decision rectified once and for all.
The MPAA is hitting "the source" in Norway as a way to try to set a legal precident that the American courts may take into effect in the ISP case here in NY.
Basically, RedHat's European division is there to try to grow the presence of RedHat over SUSE, the distribution that's number one in Europe.
They're doing this the same way that Gates was in his "PC's for the Libaries and Schools" campaign. Get the kids hooked on certain software, and they stay hooked as the get older (or force their parents/teachers to support that software, which also involves more purchases).
RedHat's target isn't Microsoft there, its SUSE.
Now mind you, because the software is "free" anyways, it doesn't look like the dumping that it would be if MS was giving free WindowsNT to kids...
Well, not specific to linux...in fact, I was using an earlier version of this before linux existed.
XFinans, who's latest version, 5.9, is included in RedHat's Powertools for 6.0, isn't complient at all. The fileformat looked complient, but internally in the code itself, the dates are being manipulated with 2 digit years. saving data results in the file saying 19000101.
Pretty ugly...now i need to decide to fix it or just find an alternative opensource checkbook balancer...
Every so often, some one posts something like this that makes me go "Gee...like VMS...".
VMS's help system was actually quite sophisticated, with a standard file format that defined help at the command prompt, and at the application specific level, that was consistent, easy (relative to unix man) to search, etc.,etc.
And the system provided API's for everything. Converting the help plain text to the help-lib file, command line instructions for reading app-specific help (and thus, being able to print it), and the system calls (when those really meant something, before windows came along and tried to redefine it) for your application to use, that worked in every language you could link to.
VMS for all its relative bloat by unix standards, at least had a nice bloat...u know what created it...kinda like a beer gut, as opposed to windows just getting fat and ugly.
on a side note, there was a man page reader called "hyperman" that had a motif based (tho an xt version also worked) pre-html hypertext widget. the widget was fully generic, but the demo program was a man page reader that understood x(1) to mean man page on x in section 1, and would thus support all SEE ALSO links when they refered to man pages. the sources are probably in the comp.sources.x.motif newsgroup archives.
Martin Luther, for using the press effectively as a means of mass communication and propaganda (techiniques still used today), and instigating a revolution of sorts that helped to free the world from the supression of the Catholic Church, allowing scientific progress to continue unfettered in the world.
George Washington. As stated in "The American Revolution" (A&E/History Channel), every revolution in history has turned back on itself and left the nation with something worse than what was being revolted against in the first place. Save one : America. George Washington is the only reason for that.
How about an alternative -- where the middlemen goes even thinner (but not as thin as ebay). The "middlemen" act as a "outlet mall" -- one common location, one everything-plus-kitchen-sink catalogue, one credit-card transaction event. But no inventory...the system breaks up the transaction request automatically, sends the payment and shipping order back to the manufacturer, who builds or finds the items and sends them to you directly.
Nobody but the original manufacturer has to deal with the warehousing or the shipping. The only real hassle is the protocol agreements that allow the "retailer" (such as it is) to be aware of out of stock items to keep customer satisfaction alive. The profit would not come from per-transaction sales, but (like the grocery store or software store model) in the suppliers bidding to have their products included in the catalogue.
Of course, in todays world, I should have kept that first paragraph above a secret and, and build a patent-protected web business out of it...oh well...:)
"independent CD's" ?? Hell, i remember buying mainstream and imports off cdconnection.com and cdeurope.com when they were TELNET based interfaces, back when i was still in college (92 or 93 or thereabouts...); before CDNow, at any rate (which also was around before Amazon i believe...
Nothing Bezos has done (personally or his company) has been in any way dramatic, earth shattering, inventive, innovative, or creative...or for that matter, profitable!
perhaps the sorting of reviews for products and the "people who bought this bought these too", but those are just aids for selling made convenience because the database is always accessable (which it isn't for a walk-in store). If walk-in stores kept those kinds of records, they would provide those kinds of services...
But when a store DID keep that kind of a record (Monica bought X for Bill Clinton), the store got NAILED for violating privacy rights (if not legally, then at least in PR).
Amazon is nothing but Brand-Name Recognition for a commodity service. That they used the web instead of mailorder catalogues means nothing in the bigger picture of things.
The _real_ power of the web is the eventual elimination of middle-men consolidators like Amazon. When you want something, go directly to the author or publisher (through their public relations systems, whatever they are) and cut out the middleman profit. We shouldn't have to keep paying for people to move stuff from one warehouse to another warehouse before it gets to us. Buy from the first warehouse.
(counter -- I do recognize that the other services provided by Amazon or CDNow are "one-stop shopping" and the "express delivery" infrastructure that smaller publishers like, say, DGM (King Crimson) don't have the ability to support profitably...but eventually, the smaller groups will, and when something appears approaching a single-electronic-ID to represent you and your credit (and it WILL happen in our lifetime), then the advantage of one-stop shopping will also go away soon...
I'd have to disagree. There's being a programmer, author, and teacher, who just happens to like to give away his code as examples as part of his teaching. I'd note that though he has a lot of excellent algorithms and utilities, and a very keen mathematical and "computer science" mind, his work is far more designed for true computer science-level programmers. That is not the majority of programmers, mind you; many will just use libraries that are built based on his code or algorithms, and probably not even know that's what they've got. [I'd be fascinated to learn just how much of the C++ STL classes and algorithms are based on his work.]
The task of designing a desktop, building on the experiences, both good and bad, of existing (and long dead) systems, managing a GREAT number of code contributors (in the bigger picture, more than the linux kernel), acknowledging the GPL to the point of letting multiple developers work on different applications that do the same thing (how many mail clients do we need, guys), with the understanding that the best will come to the fore, but the lesser will remain compatible and functional (lets see MS Windows try THAT one...), all the while developing his own contributions (core at that), addressing incoming contributions to the core, combining multiple technologies that weren't originally intended to work together (Corba, X, etc...), being a spokesperson for the effort, and finally giving up his day job to do it all...
Knuth was always a teacher and scientist. His work is greatly respected (and used) by scientists, engineers, developers, etc...this is good, and he has been acknowledged for it.
Miguel is leading an effort to develop an entire system not to be used by developers, but by ANYBODY. It will, in the end, be a MUCH more exposed project. Knuth has respect and honor in the scientific community; Miguel will be on his way to earning respect and honor in the entire linux-using world at large (well, those who don't use KDE, anyways...). Starting that public recognition among developers and open source enthusiasts is very critical to the success of the idea the Free Software is for (or should be made for) EVERYBODY, not just developers.
Yes, perhaps, it is political and timely. It is also necessary.
One of the guys who works there (owns it?) invented/helped make UML
UML is the UNIFIED model language. It is the unification of two publically known "object methodologies", created by Booch and Rumbaugh respectively. Both ended up working at Rational, and thus, unified their approaches to create UML. Neither own Rational as a company, though i'm sure each are major shareholders.
Rational WILL be restricted to the same license that MS signed with Sun. This will NOT change Sun's belief that J++ (in its current form) is not 100% Java complient and thus is allowed to use the Java logo/brand. Rational MAY choose to change J++ to make it complient, or they may not.
My problem with Rational: Anything they haven't bought (they bought purify and clearcase) doesn't exist for non-windows platforms. There will never be a linux purify, clearcase, or rose. Therefore, one can conclude there will never be a linux j++.
For most of us, this migration of J++ changes nothing. It won't change Sun's license on the product; it won't change Sun's belief it isn't Java; and it won't change the fact that it is a Windows-only product.
There's a difference between releasing software under the GPL and not releasing software at all.
RedHat is fully entitled to developing software that is never released and strictly used internally (and code executed on a server machine, not on your machine, could definitely be called "internal"). This code, therefore, does not need to be GPL, nor do you have any "right" to see it. You have the right to the source code of the update agent client (assuming its GPL like everything else), because that is run by you on your machine. A GPL client does not require a GPL server (look at gAIM).
Or is Red Hat going to keep this script secret so that only registered Red Hat users can enjoy the benefits of the Update Agent?
Why do you feel that you have the "free" right to services that others pay for?
The code and the binaries for RedHat are "Free" (in Stallman's sense of the word). The service by which you acquire them is NOT. If someone you know does the upgrade, they can give you the RPMs all they want. RedHat does release the RPMs on their main servers for free. This is more than is necessary for compliance with GPL. They don't have to even put them on the servers at all. Simply offering to sell the media with the source codes at the cost of the media is all that is required (like when you could buy the GNU tapes, back in the early nineties; hence, the 1.95 redhat cds from third-party types).
The Priority server and its interfaces are not for everybody. Access to them can be restricted without any violation of the GPL, nor any "bad attitudes" on their part. It is the service of speed/ease that you pay for, not the code.
The service is why RedHat is what it is today. If you don't like the terms of service, go to another distribution vendor.
Personal opinion, generally irrelevant to Gibson, per se.
I found myself constantly hoping for a character I could enjoy as much as I enjoyed Molly, or Case, or Automatic Jack. These were characters I cared about and who filled my imagination with ideas.
Actually that has been the same problem I've had with a lot of Anime (Japanese animation) in the 90s. Mind you, I'm refering to the more mature stuff, not the Pokeman and Sailor Moon flaptrap that the states keep getting nowadays. The strength of the series that were produced in the 70s and 80s (esp Macross) was as much or more in its characters. Nothing the 90s and the OAV revolution, however strong the "art" or the animation is, has reached that for me. There is nothing in the characters they present that is worth associating with. Most of that has to do with the lack of a long-term storyline; OAV releases tend to be one-shots, with a few exceptions (and some of those exceptions, such as Dirty Pair and Ranma, each started out as a series).
The plot of a story means nothing if you don't care about the characters enough to be interested in what happens to them.
All the action (or perhaps in Gibson's case, philosophy); all the "art" at that point ends up like icing eaten straight outta the can, w/ no cake. Tastes great at first, but leaves you empty inside when its over, especially when you've had too much of it...
SGI is writing modules to provide ACLs in Linux file systems (likely, concentrating on their XFS for Linux implementation) as part of their effort to provide Goverment-standard B1 and C2 "Orange Book" security to Linux.
You can see a presentation (recorded in Washington DC at "Linux University") at http://www.sgilinux.org/
This reminds me of a poem from the Spoon River Anthology about all these people seeing a rich man and wishing to be him. Then, the man shoots himslef in the head.
The poem is "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Yes, it came to my mind when I first read the story too...
Not on the incident itself, but on Parker/Stone's actions:
Yahoo's report (actually, from E-Online's news) says "Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the duo behind the cult animated hit, declined to release a statement--a Comedy Central spokesperson says they're mourning in private.".
MTV had a report yesterday morning that stated, "The show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, addressed the news in a statement that read, "Mary Kay was with us from the very beginning and helped make 'South Park' a success by sharing with us her amazing talent. We will miss her as an artist, a co-worker, and above all else a friend.""
So which is right? Did they make an official statement or not?
I suppose it might work -- the real issue isn't "Prior Art" that we gripe about most (though this one seems reflective of it), its the issues of "Obvious", "Innovative", and the biggest issue of "Far Reaching".
Obviousness is one that is a hard call. Some individuals can call things "obvious" willingly, like Ted Nelson and Xanadu who "discovered" (not invented, and he'll stick to that) Hypertext. He definitely feels its an "obvious" thing, once you have screens and words.
Many things are "Obvious" in hindsight after they've been used for 3 years (before we found out somebody had filed a patent on them). "Plug-ins" and the patent that Bob Cringely wrote about are those kind. We'd been using plug ins that interpret languages for years before somebody got a patent on them.
Innovative is always an opinion, particular in its context. MS's use of "innovations" certainly isn't Slashdots...
Far Reaching is the other factor. Just because your technique solves a problem doesn't mean you have the patent on ALL techniques to solve a problem. This is the big issue the PTO needs to be redressed for. The chap who has the "Patent" on "on line shopping", the chap who has the "Patent" on "web-based shopping carts". That's the kind of general garbage that needs to be done away with.
Usually "Far Reaching" is just extending two "Obvious" things together to reach an "obvious" thing, then using legalize to make it sound "non-obvious". The shopping cart metafore is a big one. It takes "tracking a user" and "storing user data", both things done in EVERY web application, and adds a piece of vocabulary to make it sound "innovative and original", then extends that to cover ALL uses of things that match that vocabulary. Definitely the finest example of a piece of crap patent I've ever seen.
but of course, that's just my opinion, and it might not even be my intellectual property...
If there is a patent on the Prior Art, that patent is upheld and the new patent is discarded.
If there is no patent on the prior art, the patent becomes null and void and the concept can not be furthur patented in ANY FORM as far as I know. The knowledge effectively becomes unpatentable (though it may remain copyrightable).
The problem is it is up to a victim of the patent (either the company/author of the prior art, or someone whose use of the prior art is restricted by the new patent) to file the lawsuit and challange the patent. Then they have to PROVE the prior art, which usually still requires the original author to submit why this new patent violates his prior art; the defendents then get to try to prove that it doesn't.
fun stuff, 'eh?
and note: the clerk who issued the patent stays out of the whole thing -- THAT'S the reason so many stupid patents are issued. If a clerk rejects one, HE has to appear in court to defend his rejection. You think a clerk is gonna waste his own time on something he gives less than a shit about? I don't think so. Issue the patent and stay out of the way is the only thing patent clerks can do, or THEY go to court.
The biggest problem w/ the patent system is there is no recourse back to the PTO on invalid patents. And its too expensive in court and w/ attourneys to challange one on its own, much less get one high enough in the court system to get the PTO affected by anything.
Hummingbird displays X applications on a Windows box. This takes Windows apps, running "natively" on a Windows machine, and re-routes their display to an X server.
Heck, talk about "Prior Art" -- www.x.org had a demo screen shot of this sort of thing back in 1992 when X11R6 was first being released.
i take a line from a song or a movie and use the first letters...then i twist that around by capitalizing certain letters or sticking in a punctuation mark in between, just to add an aire of randomness to it.
Thank you...I was hoping somebody would think of that. now mind you, it becomes "Fixed Form" if a recording is made of it, but general IP rights (and several legal cases) put that even if the recording was not produced under the consent or knowledge of the performer, the material recorded IS the performers property (although the "tape" is not).
The performer may not (legally) be able to stop sales of it, but the sales are illegal if the performer is not adequately compensated. The alternative is calling it a bootleg. The RIAA has had laws passed that the sale can become illegal if the performer has an exclusive contract with the record company that normally distributes his work.
Microsoft Comic Chat? never heard of it. can't be all that innovative if they aren't willing to advertise it more...
Active Desktop? I have it turned off. It gets in my way of actually doing productive stuff.
Radio Bar in IE5? Hate it. Don't use IE5, except to make sure that my html and dhtml pages i design using netscape (on linux) still work for others.
Wine? open-source WABI. nothing more. And because MS keeps changing their internals, it will never work. MS builds API's and libraries the way Intel designed CISC chips -- they keep making methods that do more and more and more, that you may (or might not) need, all to cover the fact that their earlier methods did too far less that what you need, so you needed to write (as an example, using early OLE) 20KLocs just to go "hello world".
a method to save me 20KLocs that I shouldn't have had to write in the first place? that's "innovation?"
To a point, I agree. However, when you look at how much businesses rely on MS products in the US alone, and compare the cases on purely econimical terms, you would notice that they really aren't that different from each other. If any one of these companies were to fall off of the face of the planet at the height of their power, I believe that there would be a severe econimic problem (for a while, anyway).
On this I would have to disagree, due to the nature of software. If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, we would still have their products. Unlike some companies that require a registration key, MS products don't (by default) lock you out of using them when installed. It would be possible for the OEMs and everyone else to be (albeit illegally, but with no MS, who would sue?) copying and using the existing products until something came along and filled in the gap.
The oil industry was different in Standards day. If Standard up and disappeared (at the time of the trial and forced breakup), ALL oil would be affected, because Standard owned the distribution channels and the supply channels. If they weren't there to keep pumping the oil, supplying the ships and tanker trucks, it wouldn't get here; the customer would be directly harmed.
In the case of MS software, we could continue to work with what we MS software we have (those who "need" to work with it right now), since making copies costs nothing compared to digging and shipping oil products.
Innovation seems to be the tricky word in use in both your column, and the FoF as a whole. Is "Innovation" adding something new to the market? Or just adding something "new" to Windows, which isn't new to the world.
MS's "innovations" to Windows or its applications have almost always (especially with each product's 3.0 and higher versions) been clones of software that is already out there, or purchased from the companies that really did the development and research. Yes, the "Browser" was an "innovation" to "Windows", as was peer to peer networking, secure server to client file/print services , PPP dialing software, but they were all hardly "innovations" to the market as a whole. Some things are things perhaps the OS should handle, some not.
I personally can't think of anything that is in Windows or any other MS product that someone else didn't come up with the idea for in the first place. Only the "innovation" of integration so tight you have to buy them all to get just one thing is MS's style (and they even stole _THAT_ from IBM's mainframe world).
Now does this harm "customers"? perhaps not. It does harm ME because I generally don't use MS products because they are often just plain bad (my opinion, of course). I use Linux not because its better NOW (in many cases, Linux tools aren't), but because they can and will improve, and I have the ability through the source codes to improve them myself. I trust linux because I can find out what went wrong. Albeit i'm the exception. It harms me when services that people provide can only be utilized by software that only runs on Windows platforms, especially if that software is made by Microsoft (meaning a port to my choice of OS is completely out of the question).
E.g., the MS streaming media software. Many music groups I like have chosen MS's products for their streaming media (concerts, or studio demos, etc). I will never hear or see what they are like. MS will NEVER develop clients for non-windows systems, with exception to the Mac. Even if they do build a mac version, it will always be a generation behind in quality and robustness (compare Office 98's lack of improvement for the Mac, compared to the progress in Office 2000 for Wintel).
So I have to make the choice. Do without things I would really like to have (although, admittedly, i don't _need_ them), or buy an MS operating system so that I can run the MS applications (which I may also have to buy) because MS has the (root of it all) monopoly on so many oft-used file formats and network streams?
Right now, I sadly choose to live without; I make my complaints known to each company that chooses to disregard my opinions as a member of their buying public and restrict me from enjoying their product because I choose to exercise a little more control over what software I trust on my system. That's a big thing to me -- I don't TRUST MS products to do what they should and not what they shouldn't.
In the future, I may have to choose the (non-)alternative. I may have to use a product I don't trust, and face the consequences when it does the wrong thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It is legal to crack any encryption, depending on how you do it (some mechanisms will fall under a copyright violation; reverse engineering based on a faulty implementation is not). What is (potentially) illegal is what you do with the knowledge gained.
If you cracked 128-bit encryption of data in and out of an e-commerce web site, fine. Good Show. If you give the cracking software away, good show. GOOD sites, those who take responsibility for their own actions, will use that information to make their systems MORE secure -- they'll fix the problem, not hide behind the (non-existant) shield of legalize.
If you use that knowledge to collect information about shoppers, shopping habits, and (especially) credit card numbers, that's unethical.
If you give or sell that collected information out, that's illegal.
Similarly, using DeCSS to read dvd's in order to watch them on a system that hasn't "licensed" it is still legal (though the MPAA would like to say otherwise; they are wrong). Using DeCSS to make copies of DVD's to give away or sell to others is illegal. DeCSS should not be illegal just because the latter is possible; the DVD industry is really more fearful of the former -- they just want the money, and are trying to use the fear of "illegal" usage as a shock-tactic in order to make the former (a legal action) illegal as well.
DeCSS code remains under the licence that the code was originally released on. Just because the code was included in a public document does not make the code "public".
Code generated by reverse engineering is (legally) safer than code that is generated by looking at existing source codes. Code written while looking at existing code still falls under copyright. If it didn't, then the need to reverse engineer the IBMPC BIOS wouldn't have existed; Compaq could simply have implemented the code AS PUBLISHED by IBM (which IBM was required to do by their consent decree with DOJ).
If I remember right, DeCSS is released under GPL. If it is, then publishing the sources as part of the case documents still falls under the GPL's legalize; nothing in DeCSS has changed because the sources were published in a legal document. We can (and should) continue to distribute the code as much as we can, and get the MPAA to realize "the cats out of the bag and you can't stop it"; or at least get the courts to realize that. DeCSS was written legally, was distributed legally.
If it isn't "OpenSource", then writing a new CSS system by "looking at the DeCSS" code will still fall under copyright of DeCSS (NOT copyright of DVD/MPAA, which is what the MPAA claims).
At any rate, we need to fight this court case (as a community) for something far more important: corporations, like goverments, want any "threat" of misuse blocked as soon as they can. They want a "potential weapon" blocked, even for legal usage, merely because "illegal usage" is possible with the tool. The government keeps trying this with guns and encryption, corporations have now taken this tactic with MP3 and now DeCSS.
A tool that "may make illegal activity possible" should NEVER be made illegal in and of itself. The act of misuse is ALREADY illegal. Enforce that, but leave the rest of us to use the tool in a legal manner. And we need (in America) a BIG court case (yes, it'll have to hit the Supreme Court) to get this legal decision rectified once and for all.
The MPAA is hitting "the source" in Norway as a way to try to set a legal precident that the American courts may take into effect in the ISP case here in NY.
Now i'm going to enjoy my snow day...
Basically, RedHat's European division is there to try to grow the presence of RedHat over SUSE, the distribution that's number one in Europe.
They're doing this the same way that Gates was in his "PC's for the Libaries and Schools" campaign. Get the kids hooked on certain software, and they stay hooked as the get older (or force their parents/teachers to support that software, which also involves more purchases).
RedHat's target isn't Microsoft there, its SUSE.
Now mind you, because the software is "free" anyways, it doesn't look like the dumping that it would be if MS was giving free WindowsNT to kids...
I don't see anything wrong with it at all...
I did fix it...turned out to just be a mis-interp of tm_year in struct tm.
nobody to submit to, so i've built a temp home
for it. look for xfinans on freshmeat.net.
XFinans, who's latest version, 5.9, is included in RedHat's Powertools for 6.0, isn't complient at all. The fileformat looked complient, but internally in the code itself, the dates are being manipulated with 2 digit years. saving data results in the file saying 19000101.
Pretty ugly...now i need to decide to fix it or just find an alternative opensource checkbook balancer...
VMS's help system was actually quite sophisticated, with a standard file format that defined help at the command prompt, and at the application specific level, that was consistent, easy (relative to unix man) to search, etc.,etc.
And the system provided API's for everything. Converting the help plain text to the help-lib file, command line instructions for reading app-specific help (and thus, being able to print it), and the system calls (when those really meant something, before windows came along and tried to redefine it) for your application to use, that worked in every language you could link to.
VMS for all its relative bloat by unix standards, at least had a nice bloat...u know what created it...kinda like a beer gut, as opposed to windows just getting fat and ugly.
on a side note, there was a man page reader called "hyperman" that had a motif based (tho an xt version also worked) pre-html hypertext widget. the widget was fully generic, but the demo program was a man page reader that understood x(1) to mean man page on x in section 1, and would thus support all SEE ALSO links when they refered to man pages. the sources are probably in the comp.sources.x.motif newsgroup archives.
Gutenberg, for the printing press.
Martin Luther, for using the press effectively as a means of mass communication and propaganda (techiniques still used today), and instigating a revolution of sorts that helped to free the world from the supression of the Catholic Church, allowing scientific progress to continue unfettered in the world.
George Washington. As stated in "The American Revolution" (A&E/History Channel), every revolution in history has turned back on itself and left the nation with something worse than what was being revolted against in the first place. Save one : America. George Washington is the only reason for that.
Alright, I'll (partially) conceed this one.
How about an alternative -- where the middlemen goes even thinner (but not as thin as ebay). The "middlemen" act as a "outlet mall" -- one common location, one everything-plus-kitchen-sink catalogue, one credit-card transaction event. But no inventory...the system breaks up the transaction request automatically, sends the payment and shipping order back to the manufacturer, who builds or finds the items and sends them to you directly.
Nobody but the original manufacturer has to deal with the warehousing or the shipping. The only real hassle is the protocol agreements that allow the "retailer" (such as it is) to be aware of out of stock items to keep customer satisfaction alive. The profit would not come from per-transaction sales, but (like the grocery store or software store model) in the suppliers bidding to have their products included in the catalogue.
Of course, in todays world, I should have kept that first paragraph above a secret and, and build a patent-protected web business out of it...oh well... :)
"independent CD's" ?? Hell, i remember buying mainstream and imports off cdconnection.com and cdeurope.com when they were TELNET based interfaces, back when i was still in college (92 or 93 or thereabouts...); before CDNow, at any rate (which also was around before Amazon i believe...
Nothing Bezos has done (personally or his company) has been in any way dramatic, earth shattering, inventive, innovative, or creative...or for that matter, profitable!
perhaps the sorting of reviews for products and the "people who bought this bought these too", but those are just aids for selling made convenience because the database is always accessable (which it isn't for a walk-in store). If walk-in stores kept those kinds of records, they would provide those kinds of services...
But when a store DID keep that kind of a record (Monica bought X for Bill Clinton), the store got NAILED for violating privacy rights (if not legally, then at least in PR).
Amazon is nothing but Brand-Name Recognition for a commodity service. That they used the web instead of mailorder catalogues means nothing in the bigger picture of things.
The _real_ power of the web is the eventual elimination of middle-men consolidators like Amazon. When you want something, go directly to the author or publisher (through their public relations systems, whatever they are) and cut out the middleman profit. We shouldn't have to keep paying for people to move stuff from one warehouse to another warehouse before it gets to us. Buy from the first warehouse.
(counter -- I do recognize that the other services provided by Amazon or CDNow are "one-stop shopping" and the "express delivery" infrastructure that smaller publishers like, say, DGM (King Crimson) don't have the ability to support profitably...but eventually, the smaller groups will, and when something appears approaching a single-electronic-ID to represent you and your credit (and it WILL happen in our lifetime), then the advantage of one-stop shopping will also go away soon...
I'd have to disagree. There's being a programmer, author, and teacher, who just happens to like to give away his code as examples as part of his teaching. I'd note that though he has a lot of excellent algorithms and utilities, and a very keen mathematical and "computer science" mind, his work is far more designed for true computer science-level programmers. That is not the majority of programmers, mind you; many will just use libraries that are built based on his code or algorithms, and probably not even know that's what they've got. [I'd be fascinated to learn just how much of the C++ STL classes and algorithms are based on his work.]
The task of designing a desktop, building on the experiences, both good and bad, of existing (and long dead) systems, managing a GREAT number of code contributors (in the bigger picture, more than the linux kernel), acknowledging the GPL to the point of letting multiple developers work on different applications that do the same thing (how many mail clients do we need, guys), with the understanding that the best will come to the fore, but the lesser will remain compatible and functional (lets see MS Windows try THAT one...), all the while developing his own contributions (core at that), addressing incoming contributions to the core, combining multiple technologies that weren't originally intended to work together (Corba, X, etc...), being a spokesperson for the effort, and finally giving up his day job to do it all...
Knuth was always a teacher and scientist. His work is greatly respected (and used) by scientists, engineers, developers, etc...this is good, and he has been acknowledged for it.
Miguel is leading an effort to develop an entire system not to be used by developers, but by ANYBODY. It will, in the end, be a MUCH more exposed project. Knuth has respect and honor in the scientific community; Miguel will be on his way to earning respect and honor in the entire linux-using world at large (well, those who don't use KDE, anyways...). Starting that public recognition among developers and open source enthusiasts is very critical to the success of the idea the Free Software is for (or should be made for) EVERYBODY, not just developers.
Yes, perhaps, it is political and timely. It is also necessary.
I knew that...my brain blanked out on his name :)
at the time
UML is the UNIFIED model language. It is the unification of two publically known "object methodologies", created by Booch and Rumbaugh respectively. Both ended up working at Rational, and thus, unified their approaches to create UML. Neither own Rational as a company, though i'm sure each are major shareholders.
Rational WILL be restricted to the same license that MS signed with Sun. This will NOT change Sun's belief that J++ (in its current form) is not 100% Java complient and thus is allowed to use the Java logo/brand. Rational MAY choose to change J++ to make it complient, or they may not.
My problem with Rational: Anything they haven't bought (they bought purify and clearcase) doesn't exist for non-windows platforms. There will never be a linux purify, clearcase, or rose. Therefore, one can conclude there will never be a linux j++.
For most of us, this migration of J++ changes nothing. It won't change Sun's license on the product; it won't change Sun's belief it isn't Java; and it won't change the fact that it is a Windows-only product.
RedHat is fully entitled to developing software that is never released and strictly used internally (and code executed on a server machine, not on your machine, could definitely be called "internal"). This code, therefore, does not need to be GPL, nor do you have any "right" to see it. You have the right to the source code of the update agent client (assuming its GPL like everything else), because that is run by you on your machine. A GPL client does not require a GPL server (look at gAIM).
Or is Red Hat going to keep this script secret so that only registered Red Hat users can enjoy the benefits of the Update Agent?
Why do you feel that you have the "free" right to services that others pay for?
The code and the binaries for RedHat are "Free" (in Stallman's sense of the word). The service by which you acquire them is NOT. If someone you know does the upgrade, they can give you the RPMs all they want. RedHat does release the RPMs on their main servers for free. This is more than is necessary for compliance with GPL. They don't have to even put them on the servers at all. Simply offering to sell the media with the source codes at the cost of the media is all that is required (like when you could buy the GNU tapes, back in the early nineties; hence, the 1.95 redhat cds from third-party types).
The Priority server and its interfaces are not for everybody. Access to them can be restricted without any violation of the GPL, nor any "bad attitudes" on their part. It is the service of speed/ease that you pay for, not the code.
The service is why RedHat is what it is today. If you don't like the terms of service, go to another distribution vendor.
Personal opinion, generally irrelevant to Gibson, per se.
I found myself constantly hoping for a character I could enjoy as much as I enjoyed Molly, or Case, or Automatic Jack. These were characters I cared about and who filled my imagination with ideas.
Actually that has been the same problem I've had with a lot of Anime (Japanese animation) in the 90s. Mind you, I'm refering to the more mature stuff, not the Pokeman and Sailor Moon flaptrap that the states keep getting nowadays. The strength of the series that were produced in the 70s and 80s (esp Macross) was as much or more in its characters. Nothing the 90s and the OAV revolution, however strong the "art" or the animation is, has reached that for me. There is nothing in the characters they present that is worth associating with. Most of that has to do with the lack of a long-term storyline; OAV releases tend to be one-shots, with a few exceptions (and some of those exceptions, such as Dirty Pair and Ranma, each started out as a series).
The plot of a story means nothing if you don't care about the characters enough to be interested in what happens to them.
All the action (or perhaps in Gibson's case, philosophy); all the "art" at that point ends up like icing eaten straight outta the can, w/ no cake. Tastes great at first, but leaves you empty inside when its over, especially when you've had too much of it...
SGI is writing modules to provide ACLs in Linux file systems (likely, concentrating on their XFS for Linux implementation) as part of their effort to provide Goverment-standard B1 and C2 "Orange Book" security to Linux.
You can see a presentation (recorded in Washington DC at "Linux University") at http://www.sgilinux.org/
The poem is "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Yes, it came to my mind when I first read the story too...
Not on the incident itself, but on Parker/Stone's actions:
Yahoo's report (actually, from E-Online's news) says "Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the duo behind the cult animated hit, declined to release a statement--a Comedy Central spokesperson says they're mourning in private.".
MTV had a report yesterday morning that stated, "The show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, addressed the news in a statement that read, "Mary Kay was with us from the very beginning and helped make 'South Park' a success by sharing with us her amazing talent. We will miss her as an artist, a co-worker, and above all else a friend.""
So which is right? Did they make an official statement or not?
I suppose it might work -- the real issue isn't "Prior Art" that we gripe about most (though this one seems reflective of it), its the issues of "Obvious", "Innovative", and the biggest issue of "Far Reaching".
Obviousness is one that is a hard call. Some individuals can call things "obvious" willingly, like Ted Nelson and Xanadu who "discovered" (not invented, and he'll stick to that) Hypertext. He definitely feels its an "obvious" thing, once you have screens and words.
Many things are "Obvious" in hindsight after they've been used for 3 years (before we found out somebody had filed a patent on them). "Plug-ins" and the patent that Bob Cringely wrote about are those kind. We'd been using plug ins that interpret languages for years before somebody got a patent on them.
Innovative is always an opinion, particular in its context. MS's use of "innovations" certainly isn't Slashdots...
Far Reaching is the other factor. Just because your technique solves a problem doesn't mean you have the patent on ALL techniques to solve a problem. This is the big issue the PTO needs to be redressed for. The chap who has the "Patent" on "on line shopping", the chap who has the "Patent" on "web-based shopping carts". That's the kind of general garbage that needs to be done away with.
Usually "Far Reaching" is just extending two "Obvious" things together to reach an "obvious" thing, then using legalize to make it sound "non-obvious". The shopping cart metafore is a big one. It takes "tracking a user" and "storing user data", both things done in EVERY web application, and adds a piece of vocabulary to make it sound "innovative and original", then extends that to cover ALL uses of things that match that vocabulary. Definitely the finest example of a piece of crap patent I've ever seen.
but of course, that's just my opinion, and it might not even be my intellectual property...
If there is a patent on the Prior Art, that patent is upheld and the new patent is discarded.
If there is no patent on the prior art, the patent becomes null and void and the concept can not be furthur patented in ANY FORM as far as I know. The knowledge effectively becomes unpatentable (though it may remain copyrightable).
The problem is it is up to a victim of the patent (either the company/author of the prior art, or someone whose use of the prior art is restricted by the new patent) to file the lawsuit and challange the patent. Then they have to PROVE the prior art, which usually still requires the original author to submit why this new patent violates his prior art; the defendents then get to try to prove that it doesn't.
fun stuff, 'eh?
and note: the clerk who issued the patent stays out of the whole thing -- THAT'S the reason so many stupid patents are issued. If a clerk rejects one, HE has to appear in court to defend his rejection. You think a clerk is gonna waste his own time on something he gives less than a shit about? I don't think so. Issue the patent and stay out of the way is the only thing patent clerks can do, or THEY go to court.
The biggest problem w/ the patent system is there is no recourse back to the PTO on invalid patents. And its too expensive in court and w/ attourneys to challange one on its own, much less get one high enough in the court system to get the PTO affected by anything.
Hummingbird's the other way around.
Hummingbird displays X applications on a Windows box. This takes Windows apps, running "natively" on a Windows machine, and re-routes their display to an X server.
Heck, talk about "Prior Art" -- www.x.org had a demo screen shot of this sort of thing back in 1992 when X11R6 was first being released.
i take a line from a song or a movie and use the first letters...then i twist that around by capitalizing certain letters or sticking in a punctuation mark in between, just to add an aire of randomness to it.
Thank you...I was hoping somebody would think of that. now mind you, it becomes "Fixed Form" if a recording is made of it, but general IP rights (and several legal cases) put that even if the recording was not produced under the consent or knowledge of the performer, the material recorded IS the performers property (although the "tape" is not).
The performer may not (legally) be able to stop sales of it, but the sales are illegal if the performer is not adequately compensated. The alternative is calling it a bootleg. The RIAA has had laws passed that the sale can become illegal if the performer has an exclusive contract with the record company that normally distributes his work.
Microsoft Comic Chat? never heard of it. can't
be all that innovative if they aren't willing
to advertise it more...
Active Desktop? I have it turned off. It gets
in my way of actually doing productive stuff.
Radio Bar in IE5? Hate it. Don't use IE5,
except to make sure that my html and dhtml pages
i design using netscape (on linux) still work
for others.
Wine? open-source WABI. nothing more. And
because MS keeps changing their internals, it
will never work. MS builds API's and libraries
the way Intel designed CISC chips -- they keep
making methods that do more and more and more,
that you may (or might not) need, all to cover
the fact that their earlier methods did too
far less that what you need, so you needed to
write (as an example, using early OLE) 20KLocs just to go "hello world".
a method to save me 20KLocs that I shouldn't have
had to write in the first place? that's
"innovation?"
On this I would have to disagree, due to the nature of software. If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, we would still have their products. Unlike some companies that require a registration key, MS products don't (by default) lock you out of using them when installed. It would be possible for the OEMs and everyone else to be (albeit illegally, but with no MS, who would sue?) copying and using the existing products until something came along and filled in the gap.
The oil industry was different in Standards day. If Standard up and disappeared (at the time of the trial and forced breakup), ALL oil would be affected, because Standard owned the distribution channels and the supply channels. If they weren't there to keep pumping the oil, supplying the ships and tanker trucks, it wouldn't get here; the customer would be directly harmed.
In the case of MS software, we could continue to work with what we MS software we have (those who "need" to work with it right now), since making copies costs nothing compared to digging and shipping oil products.
Innovation seems to be the tricky word in use in both your column, and the FoF as a whole. Is "Innovation" adding something new to the market? Or just adding something "new" to Windows, which isn't new to the world.
MS's "innovations" to Windows or its applications have almost always (especially with each product's 3.0 and higher versions) been clones of software that is already out there, or purchased from the companies that really did the development and research. Yes, the "Browser" was an "innovation" to "Windows", as was peer to peer networking, secure server to client file/print services , PPP dialing software, but they were all hardly "innovations" to the market as a whole. Some things are things perhaps the OS should handle, some not.
I personally can't think of anything that is in Windows or any other MS product that someone else didn't come up with the idea for in the first place. Only the "innovation" of integration so tight you have to buy them all to get just one thing is MS's style (and they even stole _THAT_ from IBM's mainframe world).
Now does this harm "customers"? perhaps not. It does harm ME because I generally don't use MS products because they are often just plain bad (my opinion, of course). I use Linux not because its better NOW (in many cases, Linux tools aren't), but because they can and will improve, and I have the ability through the source codes to improve them myself. I trust linux because I can find out what went wrong. Albeit i'm the exception. It harms me when services that people provide can only be utilized by software that only runs on Windows platforms, especially if that software is made by Microsoft (meaning a port to my choice of OS is completely out of the question).
E.g., the MS streaming media software. Many music groups I like have chosen MS's products for their streaming media (concerts, or studio demos, etc). I will never hear or see what they are like. MS will NEVER develop clients for non-windows systems, with exception to the Mac. Even if they do build a mac version, it will always be a generation behind in quality and robustness (compare Office 98's lack of improvement for the Mac, compared to the progress in Office 2000 for Wintel).
So I have to make the choice. Do without things I would really like to have (although, admittedly, i don't _need_ them), or buy an MS operating system so that I can run the MS applications (which I may also have to buy) because MS has the (root of it all) monopoly on so many oft-used file formats and network streams?
Right now, I sadly choose to live without; I make my complaints known to each company that chooses to disregard my opinions as a member of their buying public and restrict me from enjoying their product because I choose to exercise a little more control over what software I trust on my system. That's a big thing to me -- I don't TRUST MS products to do what they should and not what they shouldn't.
In the future, I may have to choose the (non-)alternative. I may have to use a product I don't trust, and face the consequences when it does the wrong thing.