I look through photo.net to find random images for websites. Although most of the photos on there are not free (in the GNU sense), they do store copyright permissions for each image so you can check. (I haven't yet found a way to filter searches so only free images show up.)
I didn't want to use telnet because, uh, it's crufty and why install both telnet and ssh on a box, when you can tweak ssh to to the job of both. With an ssh config file you can tell it to use no encryption for 192.168.0.* and strong encryption for everything else. Plus ssh does port forwarding much better than telnet does.
There's a simple patch you can make to OpenSSH to enable the cipher 'none' (no encryption). I did that to let my PS/2 Model 55SX work reasonably for remote X applications, while keeping the familiar ssh interface.
If you want a 'pure' X terminal with no disk at all, you might as well send the X protocol straight over the network, no ssh involved. But if you have a mixed-use system with some local and some remote stuff, and you have a trusted network that isn't going to be eavesdropped, 'ssh -c none' is pretty neat. You can always go back to Blowfish or 3DES for connecting to stuff outside your local network.
Perhaps this software could be trained to learn from images of masonry, cliffs or pebbles. It could then apply the knowledge to create 'petrified' images of Star Wars actresses.
Exactly the same licence problem occurred with Pine; their FAQ says:
10.2 Weren't earlier Pine licenses less restrictive regarding redistribution of modified versions?
No. License wording has changed from time to time, but the owner's intent has not. When it was discovered that some individuals were misinterpreting the intent of the University, the license wording was clarified.
In particular, the earliest Pine licenses included the words: "Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software... is hereby granted," but some people tried to pervert the meaning of that sentence to define "this software" to include derivative works of "this software". The intent has always been that you can re-distribute the UW distribution, but if you modify it, you have created a derivative work and must ask permission to redistribute it. There has never been implicit or explicit permission given to redistribute modified or derivative versions without permission. The license wording was therefore changed to clarify this point.
What worries me is that there are many other 'free software' projects using a licence worded like this, and until now I'd automatically assumed it was equivalent to the BSD or X11 licences.
Someone from each of the *BSDs and from each Linux distribution needs to grep through the COPYING files for occurrences of the above text, or text like it, and ask the author for clarification.
It would be best to get rid of this permission notice altogether, and change to something less ambiguous.
If advertising could be _really_ targeted - so that the adverts you see are those for products or services you'd really be likely to buy - then aren't you directly benefiting by watching the ad and getting more information about what to buy?
If advertising were truly useful, you'd be happy to watch it for free because it would help you make the best choice of what to buy. Today if you want to buy a new car you'd certainly go out and research what's available. Even now, that might include choosing to watch advertising (promotional videocassettes or whatever).
You'd only demand payment to view an advert if you thought it would be useless. 'I'm not going to waste my time watching bland Coca-Cola adverts unless you pay me to do it.' And if you think that, you probably wouldn't be influenced by the advertising anyway. It wouldn't have any useful information - otherwise you'd have wanted to watch it voluntarily - and any marketing techniques based on making the product seem attractive or building up a brand image would be unlikely to work.
If you see Benetton adverts on billboards across town, you may get the impression that their clothes are worth buying, if only 'subconsciously'. But would it have the same effect if you just sat there looking at X seconds of advertising in exchange for a few pennies?
Yes, I should have been more careful. When I said 'use GPLed code' I meant 'copy GPLed code to use in your own software', or 'create derivative works of GPLed programs'.
Did you notice how many of the deals they trumpeted in the press release are actually from the Cygnus side of the business? I wonder whether the Linux half of things is profitable.
If code is GPLed, you have the choice of whether to use it - and get contaminated - or not use it.
If code is by Microsoft, only the latter option is available. You might get a source licence under certain terms by special agreement with the company, but the same is true for GPLed software also. (The copyright holder can relicense the work under any other terms.)
What's Majel whatshername's involvement in all this stuff? Does she spend all day digging through the attic for lost scripts? Or has 'Gene R.' just become a sort of brand name for random new sci-fi?
No, all I meant was use plain HTML, but use lossless compression while sending it over the network. Having a separate format like WAP is a waste of time if all the content in it is just automatically translated from HTML to start with. Might as well just send the HTML.
Byte-compiling is a good idea, but it should be more general. I've often wished for a 'compiler' which knows about the DTD you're using and can encode tags in (probably) one byte plus attributes and content.
In fact, a compression program which knows about grammars - whether XML/SGML DTDs or Lex/Yacc rules - would be most handy. You could probably get pretty good compression on C source code if you parsed it into a syntax tree and compressed that. If only two alternatives, FOO and BAR, are possible at a given point in the syntax tree, then whichever is used can be encoded in just one bit (although you might prefer to byte-align the output). Identifier names could be stored as numbers referencing the built-up syntax table. Then run the output through gzip to deal with literal text strings and to get some extra compression. This would almost certainly give better results than just using a compressor which makes no assumptions about file format.
You can run Lynx on a 386SX with an 80x25 display. A mobile phone has an even worse display, but processing power shouldn't be a problem.
Okay, not every site is viewable in Lynx, but giving access to (say) 50% of the web is a big improvement over the 0.0001% or whatever that's available in WML. And converting existing content to lean HTML will probably be easier than converting it to WML.
And 9.6kb/s is easily fast enough for web browsing, if it is with gzip compression (which in practice seems to double or triple downloading speed) and without pictures. Just how many bytes are needed to give a screenful of text on a mobile? All that's required is for the phone company to set up a proxy server that can talk 'Accept-encoding: gzip' with the phones (I think) - and more and more web servers have this as standard anyway.
I don't need TiVo's 'intelligence' - I wrote XMLTV to grab listings in advance and semi-automatically pick what to watch. I still have to program the VCR for tomorrow's programmes, but that takes only five minutes. I'd much rather have some Perl code and an open file format (whether or not I wrote it myself) than rely on a subscription to some black-box consumer electronics. </plug>
(BTW - have a look at my TV preferences if you're curious - though this does include some shows I record for my younger brother. Honest...)
I don't archive anything. But I often get 'behind' by up to a hundred hours (eg over Christmas when lots of stuff is on, or when a particular show is being repeated one episode every day). A huge stack of videotapes is no problem, I couldn't really do anything equivalent with TiVo.
I am at home, I just may not have time to watch TV (or at least not to watch it at the same rate it is broadcast). But I can just accumulate stuff and watch it later when I have less to do. Your situation may differ.
OTOH, it is easy to expand your capacity - 3 hour, fairly crappy tapes cost around 0.89 sterling where I live. That's six hours if you don't mind really crappy picture quality (which I don't) and sound quality (which annoys me more). You can keep buying more tapes without limit. But fitting a new disk to your TiVo is expensive, and for the non-geek, difficult.
A while ago there was an app called Third Voice which allowed users to attach notes to websites. The notes would be shared with other users of the service. Obviously a really good moderation system would be needed if it got popular, but it sounded like a cool idea especially for websites that don't themselves have a comment facility.
Some site owners were outraged that people would be able to exchange information about their sites in this way. They threatened legal action claiming that it was a copyright violation to 'annotate' sites in this way. (Despite the fact that the annotations were shown in a separate window and clearly distinguishable from the main site.)
I had no sympathy for those over-sensitive webmasters then and I have, well, not very much sympathy for anyone who complains about his site being 'altered' by Smart Tags now. When publishing on the web, you do not and cannot expect to have control over how the user views your site. This applies to content just as much as presentation. If until now it has been mostly presentation that was customized, that's just for technical reasons, because it's easier to write programs to do that. But I fully expect that over the next few years, content personlization tools will proliferate. Like things that let users share annotations or add hyperlinks, or precis tools that filter out marketingspeak and attempt to distil a web page to a short passage of text.
I don't have a problem with these because users choose whether or not to use them. I would object if Microsoft shipped Smart Tags enabled by default with a set of links biased towards their own site. (Although isn't this what Netscape and others have been doing for years with home pages, 'Shop' icons, Internet Keywords and so on?) But as long as users are able to make an informed choice about whether to use this feature, and which set of smart tags to preload, I can't see any objection to it.
In short: bash Microsoft for crass commercialism if you want, but get used to the idea that users won't always read the content of your site in exactly the same form as you upload it.
True, most user customizations are just appearance. But there are also things that change content - censorware and ad-blockers are the obvious examples, though they just remove information rather than alter it. What about the translation services provided by Babelfish and others?
Anyway, I don't agree that this is changing the content of the page. All that happens is that some words get purple underlining which the user _may_ choose to click on to visit some other page. There isn't any suggestion that the original author endorses these links, at least not to a user who understands what is going on. It's not much different from highlighting email addresses in plain text. The twist is that you can configure how words are mapped to URLs by downloading different sets of tags to your machine.
The only way in Microsoft is being less than honest is in having a default set of tags which favour their own sites and products.
I can't really see the problem with smart tags. One of the tenets of the web one which I expect most Slashdot readers strongly agree with - is that you cannot control how your site will appear on the user's machine.
If they choose to view it in an unusual font, that's their choice. If they disable JavaScript, that's their choice. If they run a program to filter out banner ads, it's none of your business. The same applies if they decide to run a program which adds new links to the page that you wrote.
Of course, you do have to question the common sense of the user who runs such a program, given that the standard set of links is unlikely to be impartial. But if you carefully choose which sets of smart tags to import, it could work.
Hmm... but this criterion is clearly not applied in practice. In Europe, 'obviousness' or common sense is not allowed to be taken into account - I just assumed that the same was true in the US, given the quality of many granted software patents.
Slashdot Mirror
I look through photo.net to find random images for websites. Although most of the photos on there are not free (in the GNU sense), they do store copyright permissions for each image so you can check. (I haven't yet found a way to filter searches so only free images show up.)
Why Postfix rather than Exim? (Assuming sendmail (security holes, cruft) and qmail (non-free) are ruled out.)
I didn't want to use telnet because, uh, it's crufty and why install both telnet and ssh on a box, when you can tweak ssh to to the job of both. With an ssh config file you can tell it to use no encryption for 192.168.0.* and strong encryption for everything else. Plus ssh does port forwarding much better than telnet does.
There's a simple patch you can make to OpenSSH to enable the cipher 'none' (no encryption). I did that to let my PS/2 Model 55SX work reasonably for remote X applications, while keeping the familiar ssh interface.
If you want a 'pure' X terminal with no disk at all, you might as well send the X protocol straight over the network, no ssh involved. But if you have a mixed-use system with some local and some remote stuff, and you have a trusted network that isn't going to be eavesdropped, 'ssh -c none' is pretty neat. You can always go back to Blowfish or 3DES for connecting to stuff outside your local network.
Perhaps this software could be trained to learn from images of masonry, cliffs or pebbles. It could then apply the knowledge to create 'petrified' images of Star Wars actresses.
Someone from each of the *BSDs and from each Linux distribution needs to grep through the COPYING files for occurrences of the above text, or text like it, and ask the author for clarification. It would be best to get rid of this permission notice altogether, and change to something less ambiguous.
If advertising could be _really_ targeted - so that the adverts you see are those for products or services you'd really be likely to buy - then aren't you directly benefiting by watching the ad and getting more information about what to buy?
If advertising were truly useful, you'd be happy to watch it for free because it would help you make the best choice of what to buy. Today if you want to buy a new car you'd certainly go out and research what's available. Even now, that might include choosing to watch advertising (promotional videocassettes or whatever).
You'd only demand payment to view an advert if you thought it would be useless. 'I'm not going to waste my time watching bland Coca-Cola adverts unless you pay me to do it.' And if you think that, you probably wouldn't be influenced by the advertising anyway. It wouldn't have any useful information - otherwise you'd have wanted to watch it voluntarily - and any marketing techniques based on making the product seem attractive or building up a brand image would be unlikely to work.
If you see Benetton adverts on billboards across town, you may get the impression that their clothes are worth buying, if only 'subconsciously'. But would it have the same effect if you just sat there looking at X seconds of advertising in exchange for a few pennies?
Have you ever noticed that whenever Microsoft calls something 'Smart', it's definitely a feature you want to disable?
Yes, I should have been more careful. When I said 'use GPLed code' I meant 'copy GPLed code to use in your own software', or 'create derivative works of GPLed programs'.
Did you notice how many of the deals they trumpeted in the press release are actually from the Cygnus side of the business? I wonder whether the Linux half of things is profitable.
If code is GPLed, you have the choice of whether to use it - and get contaminated - or not use it.
If code is by Microsoft, only the latter option is available. You might get a source licence under certain terms by special agreement with the company, but the same is true for GPLed software also. (The copyright holder can relicense the work under any other terms.)
What's Majel whatshername's involvement in all this stuff? Does she spend all day digging through the attic for lost scripts? Or has 'Gene R.' just become a sort of brand name for random new sci-fi?
It's not an article on Slashdot. It's just a link to somebody else's article.
No, all I meant was use plain HTML, but use lossless compression while sending it over the network. Having a separate format like WAP is a waste of time if all the content in it is just automatically translated from HTML to start with. Might as well just send the HTML.
Byte-compiling is a good idea, but it should be more general. I've often wished for a 'compiler' which knows about the DTD you're using and can encode tags in (probably) one byte plus attributes and content.
In fact, a compression program which knows about grammars - whether XML/SGML DTDs or Lex/Yacc rules - would be most handy. You could probably get pretty good compression on C source code if you parsed it into a syntax tree and compressed that. If only two alternatives, FOO and BAR, are possible at a given point in the syntax tree, then whichever is used can be encoded in just one bit (although you might prefer to byte-align the output). Identifier names could be stored as numbers referencing the built-up syntax table. Then run the output through gzip to deal with literal text strings and to get some extra compression. This would almost certainly give better results than just using a compressor which makes no assumptions about file format.
You can run Lynx on a 386SX with an 80x25 display. A mobile phone has an even worse display, but processing power shouldn't be a problem.
Okay, not every site is viewable in Lynx, but giving access to (say) 50% of the web is a big improvement over the 0.0001% or whatever that's available in WML. And converting existing content to lean HTML will probably be easier than converting it to WML.
And 9.6kb/s is easily fast enough for web browsing, if it is with gzip compression (which in practice seems to double or triple downloading speed) and without pictures. Just how many bytes are needed to give a screenful of text on a mobile? All that's required is for the phone company to set up a proxy server that can talk 'Accept-encoding: gzip' with the phones (I think) - and more and more web servers have this as standard anyway.
I don't need TiVo's 'intelligence' - I wrote XMLTV to grab listings in advance and semi-automatically pick what to watch. I still have to program the VCR for tomorrow's programmes, but that takes only five minutes. I'd much rather have some Perl code and an open file format (whether or not I wrote it myself) than rely on a subscription to some black-box consumer electronics. </plug>
(BTW - have a look at my TV preferences if you're curious - though this does include some shows I record for my younger brother. Honest...)
I don't archive anything. But I often get 'behind' by up to a hundred hours (eg over Christmas when lots of stuff is on, or when a particular show is being repeated one episode every day). A huge stack of videotapes is no problem, I couldn't really do anything equivalent with TiVo.
I am at home, I just may not have time to watch TV (or at least not to watch it at the same rate it is broadcast). But I can just accumulate stuff and watch it later when I have less to do. Your situation may differ.
OTOH, it is easy to expand your capacity - 3 hour, fairly crappy tapes cost around 0.89 sterling where I live. That's six hours if you don't mind really crappy picture quality (which I don't) and sound quality (which annoys me more). You can keep buying more tapes without limit. But fitting a new disk to your TiVo is expensive, and for the non-geek, difficult.
I'd just get this service and stick a hard-disk recorder, or plain VCR, on the other end.
A while ago there was an app called Third Voice which allowed users to attach notes to websites. The notes would be shared with other users of the service. Obviously a really good moderation system would be needed if it got popular, but it sounded like a cool idea especially for websites that don't themselves have a comment facility.
Some site owners were outraged that people would be able to exchange information about their sites in this way. They threatened legal action claiming that it was a copyright violation to 'annotate' sites in this way. (Despite the fact that the annotations were shown in a separate window and clearly distinguishable from the main site.)
I had no sympathy for those over-sensitive webmasters then and I have, well, not very much sympathy for anyone who complains about his site being 'altered' by Smart Tags now. When publishing on the web, you do not and cannot expect to have control over how the user views your site. This applies to content just as much as presentation. If until now it has been mostly presentation that was customized, that's just for technical reasons, because it's easier to write programs to do that. But I fully expect that over the next few years, content personlization tools will proliferate. Like things that let users share annotations or add hyperlinks, or precis tools that filter out marketingspeak and attempt to distil a web page to a short passage of text.
I don't have a problem with these because users choose whether or not to use them. I would object if Microsoft shipped Smart Tags enabled by default with a set of links biased towards their own site. (Although isn't this what Netscape and others have been doing for years with home pages, 'Shop' icons, Internet Keywords and so on?) But as long as users are able to make an informed choice about whether to use this feature, and which set of smart tags to preload, I can't see any objection to it.
In short: bash Microsoft for crass commercialism if you want, but get used to the idea that users won't always read the content of your site in exactly the same form as you upload it.
True, most user customizations are just appearance. But there are also things that change content - censorware and ad-blockers are the obvious examples, though they just remove information rather than alter it. What about the translation services provided by Babelfish and others?
Anyway, I don't agree that this is changing the content of the page. All that happens is that some words get purple underlining which the user _may_ choose to click on to visit some other page. There isn't any suggestion that the original author endorses these links, at least not to a user who understands what is going on. It's not much different from highlighting email addresses in plain text. The twist is that you can configure how words are mapped to URLs by downloading different sets of tags to your machine.
The only way in Microsoft is being less than honest is in having a default set of tags which favour their own sites and products.
I can't really see the problem with smart tags. One of the tenets of the web one which I expect most Slashdot readers strongly agree with - is that you cannot control how your site will appear on the user's machine.
If they choose to view it in an unusual font, that's their choice. If they disable JavaScript, that's their choice. If they run a program to filter out banner ads, it's none of your business. The same applies if they decide to run a program which adds new links to the page that you wrote.
Of course, you do have to question the common sense of the user who runs such a program, given that the standard set of links is unlikely to be impartial. But if you carefully choose which sets of smart tags to import, it could work.
Just remove Outlook from all the machines. That's what will happen soon at my university.
Not a 100% cure but it will eliminate most of the worms going around.
Hmm... but this criterion is clearly not applied in practice. In Europe, 'obviousness' or common sense is not allowed to be taken into account - I just assumed that the same was true in the US, given the quality of many granted software patents.
Sorry, my mistake, of course it is AT&T not IBM. The point is the same.