Actually, user-to-user messages on ICQ are TCP sometimes. If it fails to send through TCP directly to the user, and you click on "send through server," then it'll send through the server using UDP.
Well, the question *isn't* whether AOL invented a list of names - they're not trying to patent it. The question is whether they invented the term "buddy list." They're trying to trademark (or servicemark or whatever) the term, so other can have buddy lists, but they have to call them "notify lists" (like IRC) or "list of friends" or "online friends" or something other than "buddy lists."
Well, "You've got mail" could possibly be legally allowed as a service mark. I haven't seen it used by anybody else before AOL, and yes, you can trademark phrases (as Sun did with "The network is the computer"). "You have mail" however, isn't trademarkable, since lots of programs (including UNIX's mail) said "You have mail" before AOL was even around.
As for Instant Message, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard anything other than AOL's Instant Messanger called an "Instant Message" until recently, so it's possible AOL invented the phrase. I personally used to call it "real-time messaging" or "one-on-one chat" or other such phrases.
Red Hat makes money, but not what anybody would call "a lot of money." A lot of their money comes from investments from people such as Intel. Also, they don't really make money from writing Open Source software. They distribute software other people wrote - the authors themselves don't make money from it (apart from the few Red Hat employs).
IBM makes "a lot of money," but that's from the very expensive computers and support contracts they sell to very large customers. Surely you don't think Jikes is what brings in most of IBM's income?
O'Reilly doesn't write Open Source software for a living. They make money on books about Open Source software, which isn't relevant to the issue of trying to make money from writing the actual software.
Caldera does not follow the Open Source business model. You'll notice that much of OpenLinux, apart from the kernel and other GPL'd parts, is closed source. In fact, AFAIK, everything that Caldera *could* keep closed source, they did.
Va Research also does not make money from writing Open Source software, they just sell computers with it installed. ---
So I'm still looking for a good example of a company that makes money writing Open Source software. POV-ray seems to make some money, and the source is available, but the license isn't an Open Source license (it's copyrighted freeware). I can't think of any company which actually makes money solely from writing Open Source software.
Heh this is the type of unrelated FUD we don't need. A Linux-based car would have made the exact same mistake. Note that the OS did not crash, and the program did not crash - it was merely a lack of foresight on the part of the coders to account for things such as ferries.
What baggage? IRC is a quite simple, well-documented protocol. Everything is in plaintext, and all the commands have numbers assigned to them so a client can just look at the numbers and know what's happening. Hell you can write IRC bots inside of mIRC's pathetic scripting language, so it can't be that hard to write an IRC client that acts like ICQ. All you need to do is take away the ability to/join a #channel and just use/msg instead, and you've got ICQ.
And IRC is definitely much more firewall friendly than ICQ. ICQ uses tons of different ports, while IRC uses one - 6667. Most clients can even go through a SOCKS firewall if you wish.
You can do the exact same thing with IRC. Just get on an IRC server and don't join any channels. If your friends want to contact you, they can/msg you, just like with ICQ or AIM.
Anyway, the more like a BBS it is, the better. FidoNet is *still* the best messaging system, a LOT better than UseNet, webboards, or mailing lists.
Heh, oops, hadn't thought of that. I suppose that would solve both the "not checking blocks" problem and the "keeps solution to himself" problem. They'd just have to make sure they do enough random checks to keep all the cheaters at bay.
I don't see how they *can* check for this. They give out keys, and then the client reports that it's either found a match or it hasn't. How can distributed.net know if it's actually checked the keyspace or just reported something falsely? Maybe that's why the protocols and source are all closed - in this case, security through obscurity is the only possible security. If all the protocols and the source were open, then somebody could also modify the client so if it found the key, it'd tell the person running the client and not report it to the distributed.net servers, so the guy could claim all the RSA prize money for himself, instead of just getting the 10% that distributed.net gives to the person who found the key.
Security through obscurity is usually a bad idea, but in this case, I can't think of any way to really make this secure other than making it obscure.
I agree. The poster was asking how to do videoconferencing under Linux, and that little comment changed it into a question asking how to do videoconferencing without using Microsoft. "How do I do videoconferencing in Linux" is a completely valid question - asking how to do something. "How do I do videoconferencing without using Microsoft" is just Microsoft-bashing - asking how to NOT do something. It's the difference between being constructive and being destructive.
...and people wonder why the Linux community is perceived as being an "anti-microsoft" community, rather than a more constructive pro-UNIX community.
I agree that flaming somebody for their hard work is uncalled for, but at the same time, you can't stifle criticism. If somebody really didn't like the new layout, they have a right to criticize it, even if scoop spent a long time working on it. If the criticism is constructive, then it can lead to a change in the layout which makes more people happy. Either that, or scoop can choose to ignore it and do whatever he wants -- it's his site after all, and chances are that people won't stop reading it, even if they do hate the layout. Most people will probably get used to it after a week or so anyway, so the best option would probably be to change the things that really annoy a lot of people, and ignore the rest until people get used to it and stop complaining.
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My, aren't we grouchy today.
Actually, user-to-user messages on ICQ are TCP sometimes. If it fails to send through TCP directly to the user, and you click on "send through server," then it'll send through the server using UDP.
There's this cool system where you can message people even when their computer is off!
email.
AOL - for all your War Dialing (tm) needs.
Well, the question *isn't* whether AOL invented a list of names - they're not trying to patent it. The question is whether they invented the term "buddy list." They're trying to trademark (or servicemark or whatever) the term, so other can have buddy lists, but they have to call them "notify lists" (like IRC) or "list of friends" or "online friends" or something other than "buddy lists."
Well, "You've got mail" could possibly be legally allowed as a service mark. I haven't seen it used by anybody else before AOL, and yes, you can trademark phrases (as Sun did with "The network is the computer"). "You have mail" however, isn't trademarkable, since lots of programs (including UNIX's mail) said "You have mail" before AOL was even around.
As for Instant Message, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard anything other than AOL's Instant Messanger called an "Instant Message" until recently, so it's possible AOL invented the phrase. I personally used to call it "real-time messaging" or "one-on-one chat" or other such phrases.
Red Hat makes money, but not what anybody would call "a lot of money." A lot of their money comes from investments from people such as Intel. Also, they don't really make money from writing Open Source software. They distribute software other people wrote - the authors themselves don't make money from it (apart from the few Red Hat employs).
IBM makes "a lot of money," but that's from the very expensive computers and support contracts they sell to very large customers. Surely you don't think Jikes is what brings in most of IBM's income?
O'Reilly doesn't write Open Source software for a living. They make money on books about Open Source software, which isn't relevant to the issue of trying to make money from writing the actual software.
Caldera does not follow the Open Source business model. You'll notice that much of OpenLinux, apart from the kernel and other GPL'd parts, is closed source. In fact, AFAIK, everything that Caldera *could* keep closed source, they did.
Va Research also does not make money from writing Open Source software, they just sell computers with it installed.
---
So I'm still looking for a good example of a company that makes money writing Open Source software. POV-ray seems to make some money, and the source is available, but the license isn't an Open Source license (it's copyrighted freeware). I can't think of any company which actually makes money solely from writing Open Source software.
a Linux car would have made the exact same mistake, so if this is supposedly proof of the crappiness of Windows, then Linux must be equally crappy.
It was a logic error - the program didn't account for the fact that ferries are not at their docks 100% of the time - you have to wait for them.
Heh this is the type of unrelated FUD we don't need. A Linux-based car would have made the exact same mistake. Note that the OS did not crash, and the program did not crash - it was merely a lack of foresight on the part of the coders to account for things such as ferries.
Christ Carter? I suppose some X-files fans could be considered fanatical enough to worship Chris Carter :P
What baggage? IRC is a quite simple, well-documented protocol. Everything is in plaintext, and all the commands have numbers assigned to them so a client can just look at the numbers and know what's happening. Hell you can write IRC bots inside of mIRC's pathetic scripting language, so it can't be that hard to write an IRC client that acts like ICQ. All you need to do is take away the ability to /join a #channel and just use /msg instead, and you've got ICQ.
And IRC is definitely much more firewall friendly than ICQ. ICQ uses tons of different ports, while IRC uses one - 6667. Most clients can even go through a SOCKS firewall if you wish.
You can do the exact same thing with IRC. Just get on an IRC server and don't join any channels. If your friends want to contact you, they can /msg you, just like with ICQ or AIM.
Anyway, the more like a BBS it is, the better. FidoNet is *still* the best messaging system, a LOT better than UseNet, webboards, or mailing lists.
Heh, oops, hadn't thought of that. I suppose that would solve both the "not checking blocks" problem and the "keeps solution to himself" problem. They'd just have to make sure they do enough random checks to keep all the cheaters at bay.
I don't see how they *can* check for this. They give out keys, and then the client reports that it's either found a match or it hasn't. How can distributed.net know if it's actually checked the keyspace or just reported something falsely? Maybe that's why the protocols and source are all closed - in this case, security through obscurity is the only possible security. If all the protocols and the source were open, then somebody could also modify the client so if it found the key, it'd tell the person running the client and not report it to the distributed.net servers, so the guy could claim all the RSA prize money for himself, instead of just getting the 10% that distributed.net gives to the person who found the key.
Security through obscurity is usually a bad idea, but in this case, I can't think of any way to really make this secure other than making it obscure.
I agree. The poster was asking how to do videoconferencing under Linux, and that little comment changed it into a question asking how to do videoconferencing without using Microsoft.
"How do I do videoconferencing in Linux" is a completely valid question - asking how to do something. "How do I do videoconferencing without using Microsoft" is just Microsoft-bashing - asking how to NOT do something. It's the difference between being constructive and being destructive.
...and people wonder why the Linux community is perceived as being an "anti-microsoft" community, rather than a more constructive pro-UNIX community.
I agree that flaming somebody for their hard work is uncalled for, but at the same time, you can't stifle criticism. If somebody really didn't like the new layout, they have a right to criticize it, even if scoop spent a long time working on it. If the criticism is constructive, then it can lead to a change in the layout which makes more people happy. Either that, or scoop can choose to ignore it and do whatever he wants -- it's his site after all, and chances are that people won't stop reading it, even if they do hate the layout. Most people will probably get used to it after a week or so anyway, so the best option would probably be to change the things that really annoy a lot of people, and ignore the rest until people get used to it and stop complaining.