There was a bug discovered in the Stage 3 release of Gentoo 2005.1 for the Athlon XP at about 3:30 AM last night. I filed a bug report about it and there is a new release winding its way through the mirrors and should be out soon.
How long until the entire Internet is provided to the masses by a handfull of corporations? If those corporations don't like a political candidate are they allowed to block his/her site? Slow it down? The community wireless options are starting to grow in popularity and the big providers (both telco and cable) are against them. Isn't it vote tampering if they were to block access to the opposing point of view's web site? What happens when the telco's block access to the cable co's websties and vice versa? Maybe that would prevent some customer churn but it would destroy the Internet that we have now and it shouldn't be allowed. If the practice is allowed to continue it won't be long until you can only get a small part of the Internet depending upon your provider? A-la China! What happens when the moral do gooders insist that certain websites don't live up to community standards? Are they then allowed to block them? Once censorship starts where is it to end? Sure there are many things that we find offensive, different things for different people, but we need to tolerate others views or we will all loose the ability to read other's views and to speak our own lest we be cencored too.
Or on the oppostie side of the equation I wouldn't mind if the FireFox developers removed the ability to go to www.MSN.com or www.Micro$oft.com but that would probably irritate alot of people. How many would be irritated if Explorer suddenly lost the ability to go to Slashdot? Censorship might seem ok at first look but once started it will not end where you think it is ok but where the ones with the deep pockets think it should end. And trust me here people: your opinion and the opinion of mega-corp are NOT the same.
Walmart doesn't use taxpayer money to develop products (nor are they asking the world to donate their spare computer cycles). Drug companies do. I'm also not happy that European drug companies leave the R&D to their American counterparts and more importantly leave the funding of R&D to the American taxpayers & drug companies (who pass on that costs to American consumers since the Europeans don't pay the same high prices that Americans do). Your point is well taken though and "no" I don't want to finance it.
Point 1:
Ok, I stand corrected here. I have seen distributed computing come up where things were not going to be released back to the public though. Most universities, including the afore mentioned Stanford, are doing research with corporations who get to monopolize the results when something useful comes out of them (and taxpayers subsidize university research departments). Although this article doesn't indicate that one way or the other. It does give a link to the project but I don't really want my organic/bio-chemistry to come flashing back at me.:-) Also many students have graduated from Stanford and started their own companies which are then free to monopolize their findings. And lastly, just because the results are published doesn't mean that they can't also be patented.
Point 2:
The company that I was talking about in Utah didn't patent a drug, they patented the gene! It just grants them an exclusive right to persue things related to that gene. They haven't come up with anything more than a test to see if one has the gene. They have used that patent to stop many other companies and universities from persuing drugs and gene therapies related to that gene (source: 60 Minutes). I can see granting the patent on the test, but not the gene! In my opinion that is just wrong.
I can see helping SETI, testing an encryption algorithm, or some other such entity but I damn sure am not going to help find a cure for cancer so that the pharmacutical companies can make even more money and deny yet another life saving resource from the people that can least afford it. If the mega-corporations want the world to donate their spare computing resources to them then they should start doing some things for the people. It is amazing that we allow it but we do. Taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars researching new drugs for exotic new diseases each year just to award the rights to the new drugs to some company that's going to make as much money off of them as they can. You can't blame the corporations as they have a duty to their shareholders but we should damn sure hold our politicians to task for giving away something that costs taxpayers mega-bucks to a corporation that is going to turn right around and charge those same taxpayers more mega-bucks to use what they funded the research for in the first place.
The article mentions discovering how protiens fold. Why? So they can use that info to make drugs that they can patent and charge us an arm and a leg for. They want to map the human genome. Why? For the same reason. There is a company in Utah that has patented a gene that can lead to breast cancer and they charge hundreds of dollars for a test that can be had for less than $10 if the patent fees are subtracted out. To make matters worse they have actually stopped other companies from researching cures that can be related to that gene. Here we have a clear case of patents inhibiting progress that is outside the world of software. Since our politicians have such a difficult time grasping why our runaway patent system needs reform maybe some non-software issues like this will help.
Another role is to research materials science. Why? To make new products to patent and then sell to us. Here's an idea, why don't we use grid computing to help a non-profit discover something that they can patent (required in todays world) and then sell to the world at cost. So how many Slashdotters want to help the international mega-corporations get even richer?
There are exceptions to things like this in all laws. What if you got pulled over and had some pot. The sherrif confiscates it. Is the sherrif now guilty of possession? NO. There is an exemption for law enforcement where possession is in the course of carrying out their official duties.
Write an email to the judge telling them they just have to see this joke. Spoof the email address so that it appears that is says http://www.dailyjokes.com/ but in reality it points to http://www.kiddyporn.com/ and then send it to him/her. Then, after they view it, crash in the door and throw them in jail giving them the next twenty years to see their error in judgement!
How do you compare Linux and the BSDs and keep the debate from turning into a friendly-fire flame-fest nightmare between bigots on both sides of the line?
It is my opinion that the legal system doesn't want to set a precedent by admitting that Breathalyzers don't actaully measure ethyl alcohol. They measure chemicals that contain methyl groups and ethanol is one of them. There are many others. See:
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I have to agree with the above comment and disagree with its parent: anonymous speech is neccessary in a free country. This is espicially true now that our current president has retaliated against people for speaking out against him and/or his policies and the current media sometimes persecutes those for speaking their mind too. The Governor of Colorado and The University of Colorado's Board of Regents are trying to strip a Boulder professor (at CU) of his tenure for publishing and speaking out on the war in Iraq and the attacks on 9/11. Now I don't want to get into whether he is right or wrong but persecuting him for speaking about his beliefs is wrong. The right to critize the goverment is so engrained in what it means to be American it became the First Amendment to The Constitution. (Incidently there were some against outling rights, as in The Bill of Rights, because -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "If we outline our rights then sooner or later some fool is going to come along and assume that anything that we didn't outline here is not a right.") The problem is that the current administration is equating anybody that speaks out against their policies as unpatriotic! And with the Patriot Act and the government's huge new campaign to gather information on all who question it, not just the ones that are potential terrorists as they claim, does anyone want to make the list? Yes, I know, I just made the list (again). So much for being able to get on an airplane in the near future.:-( Are you starting to see the need for anonimity?
I would like to provide a very profound example of the need for privacy: The U.S. Constitution. One of the biggest aids to getting the Constitution ratified in 1789 were the series of essays later entitled The Federalist Papers and although they were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and others they were published under the pseudonyms Ceasar, Publius, amoung others. See: ClassicNote on The Federalist Papers.
The Federalist Papers are the single greatest interpretive source of the Constitution of the United States, the best insight and explanation of what the Founding Fathers purpose was in the passage of the document that governs the United States of America.
Supporting freedom of speech is not going to your local church on Sunday and hoopin' and hollerin' along with the priest, minister, rabbi, or whatever title they may possess. Supporting freedom of speech is seeing someone on their soap box spewing forth the most vile, soul wrenching diatribe you can imagine and while disagreeing with the message being given you still stand up and fight for their right to voice the opinion. Unfortunately many opposing points of view must be expressed anonymoously to avoid any repurcussions (like the no-fly list).
I hope something like this passes so that the non-slashdotters can start to understand what we have been raising hell about for the last x number of years. We can all see the problems that are going to come down the pipe with these types of technologies but until the average consumer cannot use something that they have paid for they will never understand. And we need to insure that they understand that it is not their device that is causing the problems but the way that the content owners have mandated that the device works is the problem. With this particular device the problems are something like:
1) As someone else pointed out, the end of mailorder DVD sales. Amazon, are you listening?
2) The end of DVDs as gifts. How are you going to provide the recipients finger print at purchase time?
3) The ultimate parental control. If daddy buys the DVD then the kids, and the wife, cannot watch it unless daddy provides his fingerprint.
4) The end of high end home theatre systems that distribute content throughout the house. Do you really want to pick a movie from the comfort of your bed and then run downstairs to the player and provide your finger to print?
5) Forget leaving your media library to anyone in your will, if you don't will them a finger then they will never be able to use them.
6) What about injuries? If you crush your hand you're going to get sent home from the hospital in a cast with a bottle of pain killers. What better way to recover than to lie in bed and watch old movies -- except your finger in now innaccessible!
The issues are already starting to enter the market but most people haven't figured it out yet. Your average iPod user won't really understand Apple's DRM until their device is outdated and they buy a different one and then learn they have to re-purchase all of their favorite music for the new device. The content should be required to clearly print the types of devices that it will work with AND the devices that it won't work with. Unfortunately non-tech savy people are never going to understand these things until they get bitten by them.
What really needs to happen to slow the content owners down is to make it ILLEGAL for them to charge for the same content twice. If someone purchases a movie on DVD and the studios want to release it in another format then the studios should be required to provide a copy of the content in the new format to anyone that has legally purchased the original version. If someone buys a portable music player that is not compatible with their iTunes music then the music studios should be required to offer an exchange of their iTunes music to the new format free of charge. This is not a perfect solution (it doesn't ensure that music purchased for the living room will play in the car) but it should at least give the content owners pause before introducing new technologies.
If a new DVD player has to be online to verify that the certificate in the player is still valid and the content can be played then if that certificate is ever revoked the company that manufactured that DVD player should be required to replace the player free of charge. If they choose to fix it instead then they should have a week at most to fix it. If anywhere along this chain the content won't play on the purchaser's preferred playback device the content owners should be required to provide the content in the format that the consumer wants. Period. If the content owners refuse then the retail outlets that sold the content should be required to provide a no questions asked refund. It should be made easy to win a lawsuit against the content owners and/or the retail outlet that sold/produced the movie/music for breach of contract if any of these things are violated. It needs to become more expensive for the content owners to screw their consumers than it is to the consumers who are getting screwed.
Sadly, this will never happen. The content owners have purchased too many politicians for any laws of this type to
We Americans have the Ku Klux Klan; most of us are not proud of it; most of us abhor their message and tactics; most of us have learned to ignore them and not give them the attention that they crave. Those of us in the Linux community that consider ourselves normal users advocating the freedoms that GNU/Linux provides have chosen to ignore the fanatics like O'Gara and Dvorak and get our news from news sites that are level headed and as fair as possible: like Linux Weekly News. Thanks, Jon, for your measured responses and truly informative articles.
Good god don't give President redneck any ideas!! When it comes to the cash value I think that liability should belong to the school that failed to protect their students' data. But that brings up the real problem: the data about the students isn't owned by the students but by whichever organization that collected it by mandating that you turn it over. The bruised egos and the terrorists comments are just reflective of the political climate that we now live in. Anything critical of the establishment must be kecpt silent so the establishment can be allowed to track us all and god forbid anyone disagreeing with that comment; they must be terrorists. The kids are the only ones that broke the law because the laws are bought and paid for by the corporations and you know damn well that they aren't going to take responsibility for their failures! Even mentioning something like this is considered wrong, anti-establishment, anti-American, and un-patriotic so to prevent their egos from getting bruised they have to have someone else to shift the blame to.
Somtimes a good piece of satire is what is needed to get people to see the trees through the forest. Good job.
I actually went to a college that had email addresses in the form of stu_xxx-xx-xxxx@western.edu. And to make matters worse the school couldn't understand why I refused to use their email.
Windows is still a 32-bit shell sitting on a 16-bit operating system designed for an 8-bit chip upgraded from a 4-bit design, delivered by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
My Mother called me shortly after I set up her first computer (1999) almost in tears because windows told her that she had performed an illegal operation and she thought the police were on the way. I have seen mice on the floor and people trying to use them like a sewing peddle. I have seen people pick up mice and point them at the computer like a remote control. I have seen a 5 1/4" floppy drive with four disks crammed into it because the program said insert next disk and press any key to continue (it didn't tell him to remove the other disk first). I have had a tech call about a new computer that wouldn't work only to discover that there was a power blackout. I have heard a former boss of mine tell the user that the problem was probably in the keyboard; when asked what could be wrong with the keyboard he exclaimed that it was the dumbass pushing the buttons. And I have had a user complain about the phone making a terrible noise while they were online. I even got a phone call about the computer not returning a credit card after an online purchase; the user had inserted it into the 3 1/2" drive.
To answer your question: Yes, there are people that are that dumb.
Invent an idiot proof computer and someone will build a better idiot!
This comment is not about the articles. Instead I have to say that I liked the way that slashdot's editors weaved two different viwes together to spike everyone's attention. Pro M$ vs other M$ opinions. I have to confess that I'm less than optimistic about Microsoft's benevolence. Although it wasn't pointed out in the teaser I'm sure that many slashdotter's haven't missed the opportunity to point out the difference between free as in beer (at least until MS gains dominance) and free as in unencumbered and available to all.
Apparently, the flow control mechanism of TCP doesn't work well when the latency goes to 40 minutes.
That's strange. I thought that issue would have been worked out by RFC 1149 or CPIP. You would think that 40 minute transit times would be a quick ping when using the
Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP).
Slashdot Mirror
It does now. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/
There was a bug discovered in the Stage 3 release of Gentoo 2005.1 for the Athlon XP at about 3:30 AM last night. I filed a bug report about it and there is a new release winding its way through the mirrors and should be out soon.
You're right.
Well, I spoke too soon. It seems that M$ is already deleting Apple. See this El Reg article for the details.
Or on the oppostie side of the equation I wouldn't mind if the FireFox developers removed the ability to go to www.MSN.com or www.Micro$oft.com but that would probably irritate alot of people. How many would be irritated if Explorer suddenly lost the ability to go to Slashdot? Censorship might seem ok at first look but once started it will not end where you think it is ok but where the ones with the deep pockets think it should end. And trust me here people: your opinion and the opinion of mega-corp are NOT the same.
Walmart doesn't use taxpayer money to develop products (nor are they asking the world to donate their spare computer cycles). Drug companies do. I'm also not happy that European drug companies leave the R&D to their American counterparts and more importantly leave the funding of R&D to the American taxpayers & drug companies (who pass on that costs to American consumers since the Europeans don't pay the same high prices that Americans do). Your point is well taken though and "no" I don't want to finance it.
Ok, I stand corrected here. I have seen distributed computing come up where things were not going to be released back to the public though. Most universities, including the afore mentioned Stanford, are doing research with corporations who get to monopolize the results when something useful comes out of them (and taxpayers subsidize university research departments). Although this article doesn't indicate that one way or the other. It does give a link to the project but I don't really want my organic/bio-chemistry to come flashing back at me.
Point 2:
The company that I was talking about in Utah didn't patent a drug, they patented the gene! It just grants them an exclusive right to persue things related to that gene. They haven't come up with anything more than a test to see if one has the gene. They have used that patent to stop many other companies and universities from persuing drugs and gene therapies related to that gene (source: 60 Minutes). I can see granting the patent on the test, but not the gene! In my opinion that is just wrong.
The article mentions discovering how protiens fold. Why? So they can use that info to make drugs that they can patent and charge us an arm and a leg for. They want to map the human genome. Why? For the same reason. There is a company in Utah that has patented a gene that can lead to breast cancer and they charge hundreds of dollars for a test that can be had for less than $10 if the patent fees are subtracted out. To make matters worse they have actually stopped other companies from researching cures that can be related to that gene. Here we have a clear case of patents inhibiting progress that is outside the world of software. Since our politicians have such a difficult time grasping why our runaway patent system needs reform maybe some non-software issues like this will help.
Another role is to research materials science. Why? To make new products to patent and then sell to us. Here's an idea, why don't we use grid computing to help a non-profit discover something that they can patent (required in todays world) and then sell to the world at cost. So how many Slashdotters want to help the international mega-corporations get even richer?
There are exceptions to things like this in all laws. What if you got pulled over and had some pot. The sherrif confiscates it. Is the sherrif now guilty of possession? NO. There is an exemption for law enforcement where possession is in the course of carrying out their official duties.
What if the person in question had deleted his cache but the prosecutor recovered the deleted files? Technically it was still on the hard drive.
What do you think?
By not doing it on slashdot!
It is my opinion that the legal system doesn't want to set a precedent by admitting that Breathalyzers don't actaully measure ethyl alcohol. They measure chemicals that contain methyl groups and ethanol is one of them. There are many others. See: 1 2 3 4 5
I would like to provide a very profound example of the need for privacy: The U.S. Constitution. One of the biggest aids to getting the Constitution ratified in 1789 were the series of essays later entitled The Federalist Papers and although they were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and others they were published under the pseudonyms Ceasar, Publius, amoung others. See: ClassicNote on The Federalist Papers.
The Federalist Papers are the single greatest interpretive source of the Constitution of the United States, the best insight and explanation of what the Founding Fathers purpose was in the passage of the document that governs the United States of America.
Supporting freedom of speech is not going to your local church on Sunday and hoopin' and hollerin' along with the priest, minister, rabbi, or whatever title they may possess. Supporting freedom of speech is seeing someone on their soap box spewing forth the most vile, soul wrenching diatribe you can imagine and while disagreeing with the message being given you still stand up and fight for their right to voice the opinion. Unfortunately many opposing points of view must be expressed anonymoously to avoid any repurcussions (like the no-fly list).
1) As someone else pointed out, the end of mailorder DVD sales. Amazon, are you listening?
2) The end of DVDs as gifts. How are you going to provide the recipients finger print at purchase time?
3) The ultimate parental control. If daddy buys the DVD then the kids, and the wife, cannot watch it unless daddy provides his fingerprint.
4) The end of high end home theatre systems that distribute content throughout the house. Do you really want to pick a movie from the comfort of your bed and then run downstairs to the player and provide your finger to print?
5) Forget leaving your media library to anyone in your will, if you don't will them a finger then they will never be able to use them.
6) What about injuries? If you crush your hand you're going to get sent home from the hospital in a cast with a bottle of pain killers. What better way to recover than to lie in bed and watch old movies -- except your finger in now innaccessible!
The issues are already starting to enter the market but most people haven't figured it out yet. Your average iPod user won't really understand Apple's DRM until their device is outdated and they buy a different one and then learn they have to re-purchase all of their favorite music for the new device. The content should be required to clearly print the types of devices that it will work with AND the devices that it won't work with. Unfortunately non-tech savy people are never going to understand these things until they get bitten by them.
What really needs to happen to slow the content owners down is to make it ILLEGAL for them to charge for the same content twice. If someone purchases a movie on DVD and the studios want to release it in another format then the studios should be required to provide a copy of the content in the new format to anyone that has legally purchased the original version. If someone buys a portable music player that is not compatible with their iTunes music then the music studios should be required to offer an exchange of their iTunes music to the new format free of charge. This is not a perfect solution (it doesn't ensure that music purchased for the living room will play in the car) but it should at least give the content owners pause before introducing new technologies.
If a new DVD player has to be online to verify that the certificate in the player is still valid and the content can be played then if that certificate is ever revoked the company that manufactured that DVD player should be required to replace the player free of charge. If they choose to fix it instead then they should have a week at most to fix it. If anywhere along this chain the content won't play on the purchaser's preferred playback device the content owners should be required to provide the content in the format that the consumer wants. Period. If the content owners refuse then the retail outlets that sold the content should be required to provide a no questions asked refund. It should be made easy to win a lawsuit against the content owners and/or the retail outlet that sold/produced the movie/music for breach of contract if any of these things are violated. It needs to become more expensive for the content owners to screw their consumers than it is to the consumers who are getting screwed.
Sadly, this will never happen. The content owners have purchased too many politicians for any laws of this type to
We Americans have the Ku Klux Klan; most of us are not proud of it; most of us abhor their message and tactics; most of us have learned to ignore them and not give them the attention that they crave. Those of us in the Linux community that consider ourselves normal users advocating the freedoms that GNU/Linux provides have chosen to ignore the fanatics like O'Gara and Dvorak and get our news from news sites that are level headed and as fair as possible: like Linux Weekly News. Thanks, Jon, for your measured responses and truly informative articles.
Isn't this kinda like a brothel selling Valtrex and Penicillin?
Somtimes a good piece of satire is what is needed to get people to see the trees through the forest. Good job.
I actually went to a college that had email addresses in the form of stu_xxx-xx-xxxx@western.edu. And to make matters worse the school couldn't understand why I refused to use their email.
Knoppix! Or any other bootable CD will get past any keystroke loggers that are not hardware based.
Windows is still a 32-bit shell sitting on a 16-bit operating system designed for an 8-bit chip upgraded from a 4-bit design, delivered by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
To answer your question: Yes, there are people that are that dumb.
Invent an idiot proof computer and someone will build a better idiot!
This comment is not about the articles. Instead I have to say that I liked the way that slashdot's editors weaved two different viwes together to spike everyone's attention. Pro M$ vs other M$ opinions. I have to confess that I'm less than optimistic about Microsoft's benevolence. Although it wasn't pointed out in the teaser I'm sure that many slashdotter's haven't missed the opportunity to point out the difference between free as in beer (at least until MS gains dominance) and free as in unencumbered and available to all.
That's strange. I thought that issue would have been worked out by RFC 1149 or CPIP. You would think that 40 minute transit times would be a quick ping when using the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP).
This could go along way to helping make GNU/Linux/X/E as big or bigger than Windows!