That's all very well, but these ad farms aren't just serving ads, are they? Most of the time they're also installing tracking cookies and collecting private information. You want me to see ads? Don't try to track me, then. Until this shit stops, I won't just be using AdBlock, I'll be blacklisting ad farms on my proxy and barring them on the gateway. Not only is this the primary motivation for me eschewing ad farms but it is also my fundamental right to retain control of what I allow in and out of my private network. Don't like it? Tough. My network, my rules.
It's not paranoia, just yet another ego trip. "I'm so important they want to blow me away!" No Darl, you little turd, we want to see you live the rest of your hopefully long, long life as the insignificant worm you really are. That's a fitting punishment for egomaniacs.
OK, funny, but that isn't the issue here. Whatever the license says, the code is still legal, distribution within the terms is still legal and Darl and company are still toerags. What could happen is that a piece of legalese in the license may suddenly turn out to translate into layman as "you may print this code out, roll it up and beat baby seals to death with it," and the copyright holder may not have wanted that many baby seals on his or her conscience.
The GPL (v2) has been around long enough that I would have imagined those kinks had been spotted but, as with other licenses, the law behind them may change. What "derivative work" means today may not be the same thing it means tomorrow. Quite why they're singling out the GPLv2 for this when all licenses are subject to the same foundations of sand I'm not really sure. Maybe they think it will promote discussion - the fools!
Yet the US courts are where the majority of this issue will be argued. Even I, as a Rightpondian, can see the sense in that. Chill. Not everything is a calculated insult to your national sovereignty.
Linus is probably one of the most pragmatic members of the open source movement, along with being a self-proclaimed bastard (you say that like it's a bad thing). Linus will only think about moving from GPLv2 if Linus thinks it's necessary or beneficial, not because some pen-pusher, pundit or journo tells him to.
Apple iPod Video, according to usbdevs. What do Apple do now? Blacklist their own product or get sneaky? IMHO, Palm are doing us no favours here. What is most likely to happen next is a DRM-esque key exchange between iPods and iTunes, which will not only bugger up the Pre's sync to iTunes feature permanently, but syncing iPods to OSS applications will more than likely be the collateral damage.
If they wanted to be really nasty, they could probably brick a connected Pre in the process of updating Apple firmware to implement this key exchange. You're an iPod Video, eh? Here, have some firmware before we talk again. "Well, Your Honour, it was using our vendor and device ID. Not our fault our flash code bricked it. Pre flasher code in our update software? The very thought!"
This will not end well. I'd forget about making your device pretend to be something else, Palm. It might come back to bite you and your customers on the arse.
Ignoring them doesn't work because they feed off of each other, leading to some enormous threads with very little content beyond "{insert object of affection here} FTW!" What seems to put a stop to them is that rare beast, the highly gratifying post that looks at both sides of the free/proprietary issue objectively, examining the true reasons for the current state of software, i.e. all software sucks, usually an edifying read that immediately rings true to all but the most fanatical and blinkered supporter of one camp or the other.
For example, a true Linux user is never going to be happy with the system, in the same way an objective Windows user is going to find flaws and niggles each and every day and can probably be found reading others' experiences and nodding sagely at the sorry state of whatever bit of software has caused regressions. Being able to discuss these flaws logically without exaggeration and hyperbole marks the intelligent and encourages continuous improvement. I know my own system of choice has huge flaws at present - Java is a complete mess and the new lockd seems to be incompatible with the last iteration causing headaches between 7 and 8 in NFS environments, two major issues off the top of my head from my own testing and there will be more.
What encourages the fanpersons is arguments between obviously sane, sensible and intelligent people who can be objective but have fallen into the trap of becoming defensive over a single issue, such as opening with an unnecessary dig at the zealots which only serves to stir them up. Perhaps the answer is to be a bit more selective in choosing enemies, don't poke those that you have already identified with a stick at every opportunity and be a little more tolerant of those who just may be capable of objective thought?
Oh, and who modded the parent flamebait? Can you honestly say that there are no people using Slashdot's comments just to fan the flames as the parent hints? Can you even honestly think for one moment that there isn't a solid core of Linux/Windows/OSX users for whom the operating system is more important than the facilities it provides and who will hear not a bad word against the object of their affections or who feel superior to those who disagree with their choices? Please, let's have a dose of reality here for a moment.
We do. And you know what? If it keeps the likes of Murdoch unhappy, I'll happily pay it again. There's a rumour doing the rounds that his BSkyB media company is trying to lure the ITV (the other PSB network that used to be made up of regional broadcasters) secondary channels away from the Freeview and Freesat networks. I shudder to think what other plans he has to lock broadcasting up under his own control, but he needs stopping, and fast.
No, those were a replacement for the battery, the old one having turned to rocks eons ago. The TV tuner was to be made from a Pringles can, a bit of coax of a specific length, the teletext unit from an old BBC-B (modified, of course) and some custom software. However, the project leaders started arguing about what colour the background of the home screen should be, fell out with each other and all that's left of the whole thing is an abandoned Sourceforge page.
The degree of hand holding most casual users require seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with them being truly in control of their own computin[g] experience.
That's about as concisely and cogently as I have ever seen this premise explained.
A good example is the Google Safebrowsing incorporated in Firefox. I, personally, hate the idea and remove the lot immediately but, that said, I can spot a phishing or malware site a mile off and it's highly unlikely that any such malware will be compatible with my underlying OS anyway. However, for the typical user, this stuff is almost essential regardless of the privacy implications.
Why the hell is the parent marked troll? He (apologies, gender doesn't convey well in handles) is quite right that the Free Software and Open Source movements are two separate entities, although their communities often overlap. RMS himself tries his hardest to disassociate the two. And yes, some of us can see past the MS hatred to the zealotry that lies beneath, then end up questioning what the FSF's real motives are.
WGA DOES NOT examine the contents of your hard drive. It simply compares the installation time product key and hardware hash with a list of known bad keys and stored activation data, distinct from activation since this can happen at any time, such as a Windows update session.
On the security front, MS has made some important in-roads, particularly the old problem of running as root all the time. UAC may not be perfect, but it's a damned sight better than anything they've come up with since Windows 2000, which was *almost* perfect when set up correctly.
With such rebuttals being rather simple to come up with for someone with an open mind and few preconceptions, even without recourse to web searches, one wonders how much of the rest of this tirade against MS is accurate. Admittedly their business practice descriptions seem to be spot-on, especially with regards to pre-installation of Windows (you get it whether you want it or not), but those like myself running non-Windows based OSen would be foolish to buy a pre-built machine in the first place, given the hardware compatibility complexity and the quality of the rubbish they build "standard" PCs with these days. Yeah, yeah, laptops and netbooks, the usual response to this assertion. Well you can, if you know what you're doing and who to deal with, spec these yourself with equal facility.
As you can probably tell by now, I couldn't care less about market share figures. They're for the economists; I'm a technologist and I'd much rather deal with technical issues than political and economic.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Of course they have. The main reason BSD got sidelined, after growing very nicely thank you to start with, was the AT&T USL lawsuit spreading FUD and scaring users off. AT&T are not SCO and made for a pretty formidable opponent. By the time the litigation was over (AT&T backed down after it was found that a lot of BSD code had been subsumed into SVR4) and the unencumbered 4.4-BSD Lite was released, Linux had already gained traction (a working TCP stack) and was collecting up a lot of users disillusioned with the AT&T shenanigans. That the settlement was kept secret also added to the FUD and BSD, as a result, was almost left deserted and unloved. The licence and Linux being GPL really didn't make one iota of difference. Even Linus said later that had BSD been available and its status not legally dubious, he probably wouldn't have started on Linux.
He's doing what's commonly known as "engaging the community." Sure, he could have read the GPL and taken the stance that, using his interpretation, the original developer a) released under the GPL, b) knew the consequences and c) can go get knotted, but that seems like the road to argument and animosity within the community of GPL developers.
This way, he's getting a consensus from the community, backing up his own reading of the GPL and ending up with an agreement from the majority of GPL supporters that he has done nothing wrong (which is exactly what he seems to be getting). At the same time, he's also helpfully giving the rest of us the answers to this question should it ever bite us in the arse in the future.
Which would you prefer, a unilateral "go fuck yourself, I'm compliant," or "hey guys, this fellow GPL developer has said I'm acting contrary to the spirit of the GPL, even though I'm offering full sources, by charging for the resultant binary. Is he right?" In my humble opinion, the latter not only sounds a lot less arrogant, it also gives the guy a lot more confidence in his interpretation of the licence under which the original source was distributed. When you're coding on your own and YANAL, this matters.
Seems they (1984 and Animal Farm) have both disappeared from Feedbooks, too. Strangely, they haven't disappeared from my Tungsten's SD card. Looks like I control my devices, not some faceless waste of oxygen in an office. What a very odd, possibly seditious idea...
Job done (should work with Gentoo, buggered if I know how to do this in other distros, DYOR), even with -O2/-O3. This is an optimisation/code conflict. The code itself is perfectly valid, so if your CFLAGS are -O -pipe you have nothing to worry about. GCC's info pages show what is enabled at various optimisation levels. -fdelete-null-pointer-checks is enabled at -O2. Of course, this only applies when you compile your own kernel. If vendors are supplying kernels compiled with -O2 without checking what it does to the code then it is obvious who is to blame.
Thank you for the information. I remain cynical, but it does sound plausible. The one thing I would question: Is your data really anonymous if, given that this looks like a two-way conversation with the browser, they have your IP address and the identifier of the browser (Chrome, apparently, creates a UUID for each installation)? In fact, if this is the true purpose, what is the UUID for in the first place? Even the source wouldn't help as we can't really tell what the other end is doing with the data. I know you're just passing on information "from the horse's mouth," as it were, and I'm grateful. I'm simply pointing out my doubts.
I personally would rather there be some sort of mechanism where site operators can indicate likely exit pages (i.e. <a href="..." rel="[unlikely|likely|probable]"> where unlikely would give the current behavior, likely would pre-fetch DNS and probable would pre-fetch the contents of the linked page)
If pre-fetching is to be done at all, your method looks like the way forward. Simple, easy to understand and implement in browsers. I don't really agree with pre-fetching (I think it's a waste of bandwidth and could be a security risk in certain circumstances), but I'd like to think there was some coherent way to manage it if it is going to become ubiquitous.
Slashdot Mirror
...to post this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y36fG2Oba0
Isn't it about time News for Nerds got a 128bit address? You know it makes sense!
No, it bloody well isn't a quote from me. Try by mcelrath (8027) on Sunday March 07, @01:25.
No offence, mcelrath. I see nothing wrong or embarrassing about your post, just incorrect attribution really gets up my nose.
That's all very well, but these ad farms aren't just serving ads, are they? Most of the time they're also installing tracking cookies and collecting private information. You want me to see ads? Don't try to track me, then. Until this shit stops, I won't just be using AdBlock, I'll be blacklisting ad farms on my proxy and barring them on the gateway. Not only is this the primary motivation for me eschewing ad farms but it is also my fundamental right to retain control of what I allow in and out of my private network. Don't like it? Tough. My network, my rules.
Even more awesomeness. A one-shot netblock rule to shut out all advertising and stop privacy leakage. What more could anyone want?
It's not paranoia, just yet another ego trip. "I'm so important they want to blow me away!" No Darl, you little turd, we want to see you live the rest of your hopefully long, long life as the insignificant worm you really are. That's a fitting punishment for egomaniacs.
You really needed to round that off with "you'll be incredibly lucky to get Darl working for you."
OK, funny, but that isn't the issue here. Whatever the license says, the code is still legal, distribution within the terms is still legal and Darl and company are still toerags. What could happen is that a piece of legalese in the license may suddenly turn out to translate into layman as "you may print this code out, roll it up and beat baby seals to death with it," and the copyright holder may not have wanted that many baby seals on his or her conscience.
The GPL (v2) has been around long enough that I would have imagined those kinks had been spotted but, as with other licenses, the law behind them may change. What "derivative work" means today may not be the same thing it means tomorrow. Quite why they're singling out the GPLv2 for this when all licenses are subject to the same foundations of sand I'm not really sure. Maybe they think it will promote discussion - the fools!
Yet the US courts are where the majority of this issue will be argued. Even I, as a Rightpondian, can see the sense in that. Chill. Not everything is a calculated insult to your national sovereignty.
Linus is probably one of the most pragmatic members of the open source movement, along with being a self-proclaimed bastard (you say that like it's a bad thing). Linus will only think about moving from GPLv2 if Linus thinks it's necessary or beneficial, not because some pen-pusher, pundit or journo tells him to.
Apple iPod Video, according to usbdevs. What do Apple do now? Blacklist their own product or get sneaky? IMHO, Palm are doing us no favours here. What is most likely to happen next is a DRM-esque key exchange between iPods and iTunes, which will not only bugger up the Pre's sync to iTunes feature permanently, but syncing iPods to OSS applications will more than likely be the collateral damage.
If they wanted to be really nasty, they could probably brick a connected Pre in the process of updating Apple firmware to implement this key exchange. You're an iPod Video, eh? Here, have some firmware before we talk again. "Well, Your Honour, it was using our vendor and device ID. Not our fault our flash code bricked it. Pre flasher code in our update software? The very thought!"
This will not end well. I'd forget about making your device pretend to be something else, Palm. It might come back to bite you and your customers on the arse.
Replying to my own post. Looks like I should practice what I preach. For Linux/Windows/OSX please read BSD/Linux/Windows/OSX/${OTHER_OS}
Ignoring them doesn't work because they feed off of each other, leading to some enormous threads with very little content beyond "{insert object of affection here} FTW!" What seems to put a stop to them is that rare beast, the highly gratifying post that looks at both sides of the free/proprietary issue objectively, examining the true reasons for the current state of software, i.e. all software sucks, usually an edifying read that immediately rings true to all but the most fanatical and blinkered supporter of one camp or the other.
For example, a true Linux user is never going to be happy with the system, in the same way an objective Windows user is going to find flaws and niggles each and every day and can probably be found reading others' experiences and nodding sagely at the sorry state of whatever bit of software has caused regressions. Being able to discuss these flaws logically without exaggeration and hyperbole marks the intelligent and encourages continuous improvement. I know my own system of choice has huge flaws at present - Java is a complete mess and the new lockd seems to be incompatible with the last iteration causing headaches between 7 and 8 in NFS environments, two major issues off the top of my head from my own testing and there will be more.
What encourages the fanpersons is arguments between obviously sane, sensible and intelligent people who can be objective but have fallen into the trap of becoming defensive over a single issue, such as opening with an unnecessary dig at the zealots which only serves to stir them up. Perhaps the answer is to be a bit more selective in choosing enemies, don't poke those that you have already identified with a stick at every opportunity and be a little more tolerant of those who just may be capable of objective thought?
Oh, and who modded the parent flamebait? Can you honestly say that there are no people using Slashdot's comments just to fan the flames as the parent hints? Can you even honestly think for one moment that there isn't a solid core of Linux/Windows/OSX users for whom the operating system is more important than the facilities it provides and who will hear not a bad word against the object of their affections or who feel superior to those who disagree with their choices? Please, let's have a dose of reality here for a moment.
That, right there, just shows how very, very far users are from being educated...
We do. And you know what? If it keeps the likes of Murdoch unhappy, I'll happily pay it again. There's a rumour doing the rounds that his BSkyB media company is trying to lure the ITV (the other PSB network that used to be made up of regional broadcasters) secondary channels away from the Freeview and Freesat networks. I shudder to think what other plans he has to lock broadcasting up under his own control, but he needs stopping, and fast.
No, those were a replacement for the battery, the old one having turned to rocks eons ago. The TV tuner was to be made from a Pringles can, a bit of coax of a specific length, the teletext unit from an old BBC-B (modified, of course) and some custom software. However, the project leaders started arguing about what colour the background of the home screen should be, fell out with each other and all that's left of the whole thing is an abandoned Sourceforge page.
;o)
Now THAT is believable
That's about as concisely and cogently as I have ever seen this premise explained.
A good example is the Google Safebrowsing incorporated in Firefox. I, personally, hate the idea and remove the lot immediately but, that said, I can spot a phishing or malware site a mile off and it's highly unlikely that any such malware will be compatible with my underlying OS anyway. However, for the typical user, this stuff is almost essential regardless of the privacy implications.
Why the hell is the parent marked troll? He (apologies, gender doesn't convey well in handles) is quite right that the Free Software and Open Source movements are two separate entities, although their communities often overlap. RMS himself tries his hardest to disassociate the two. And yes, some of us can see past the MS hatred to the zealotry that lies beneath, then end up questioning what the FSF's real motives are.
WGA DOES NOT examine the contents of your hard drive. It simply compares the installation time product key and hardware hash with a list of known bad keys and stored activation data, distinct from activation since this can happen at any time, such as a Windows update session.
On the security front, MS has made some important in-roads, particularly the old problem of running as root all the time. UAC may not be perfect, but it's a damned sight better than anything they've come up with since Windows 2000, which was *almost* perfect when set up correctly.
With such rebuttals being rather simple to come up with for someone with an open mind and few preconceptions, even without recourse to web searches, one wonders how much of the rest of this tirade against MS is accurate. Admittedly their business practice descriptions seem to be spot-on, especially with regards to pre-installation of Windows (you get it whether you want it or not), but those like myself running non-Windows based OSen would be foolish to buy a pre-built machine in the first place, given the hardware compatibility complexity and the quality of the rubbish they build "standard" PCs with these days. Yeah, yeah, laptops and netbooks, the usual response to this assertion. Well you can, if you know what you're doing and who to deal with, spec these yourself with equal facility.
As you can probably tell by now, I couldn't care less about market share figures. They're for the economists; I'm a technologist and I'd much rather deal with technical issues than political and economic.
Of course they have. The main reason BSD got sidelined, after growing very nicely thank you to start with, was the AT&T USL lawsuit spreading FUD and scaring users off. AT&T are not SCO and made for a pretty formidable opponent. By the time the litigation was over (AT&T backed down after it was found that a lot of BSD code had been subsumed into SVR4) and the unencumbered 4.4-BSD Lite was released, Linux had already gained traction (a working TCP stack) and was collecting up a lot of users disillusioned with the AT&T shenanigans. That the settlement was kept secret also added to the FUD and BSD, as a result, was almost left deserted and unloved. The licence and Linux being GPL really didn't make one iota of difference. Even Linus said later that had BSD been available and its status not legally dubious, he probably wouldn't have started on Linux.
3. Disconnect yourselves from tracking and analytics and do NOT try to set cookies. I don't mind a few text ads. I DO mind being snooped on.
He's doing what's commonly known as "engaging the community." Sure, he could have read the GPL and taken the stance that, using his interpretation, the original developer a) released under the GPL, b) knew the consequences and c) can go get knotted, but that seems like the road to argument and animosity within the community of GPL developers.
This way, he's getting a consensus from the community, backing up his own reading of the GPL and ending up with an agreement from the majority of GPL supporters that he has done nothing wrong (which is exactly what he seems to be getting). At the same time, he's also helpfully giving the rest of us the answers to this question should it ever bite us in the arse in the future.
Which would you prefer, a unilateral "go fuck yourself, I'm compliant," or "hey guys, this fellow GPL developer has said I'm acting contrary to the spirit of the GPL, even though I'm offering full sources, by charging for the resultant binary. Is he right?" In my humble opinion, the latter not only sounds a lot less arrogant, it also gives the guy a lot more confidence in his interpretation of the licence under which the original source was distributed. When you're coding on your own and YANAL, this matters.
Seems they (1984 and Animal Farm) have both disappeared from Feedbooks, too. Strangely, they haven't disappeared from my Tungsten's SD card. Looks like I control my devices, not some faceless waste of oxygen in an office. What a very odd, possibly seditious idea...
CFLAGS+= -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks
Job done (should work with Gentoo, buggered if I know how to do this in other distros, DYOR), even with -O2/-O3. This is an optimisation/code conflict. The code itself is perfectly valid, so if your CFLAGS are -O -pipe you have nothing to worry about. GCC's info pages show what is enabled at various optimisation levels. -fdelete-null-pointer-checks is enabled at -O2. Of course, this only applies when you compile your own kernel. If vendors are supplying kernels compiled with -O2 without checking what it does to the code then it is obvious who is to blame.
Yes, it would probably be more effective than the knife they used...
Thank you for the information. I remain cynical, but it does sound plausible. The one thing I would question: Is your data really anonymous if, given that this looks like a two-way conversation with the browser, they have your IP address and the identifier of the browser (Chrome, apparently, creates a UUID for each installation)? In fact, if this is the true purpose, what is the UUID for in the first place? Even the source wouldn't help as we can't really tell what the other end is doing with the data. I know you're just passing on information "from the horse's mouth," as it were, and I'm grateful. I'm simply pointing out my doubts.
I personally would rather there be some sort of mechanism where site operators can indicate likely exit pages (i.e. <a href="..." rel="[unlikely|likely|probable]"> where unlikely would give the current behavior, likely would pre-fetch DNS and probable would pre-fetch the contents of the linked page)
If pre-fetching is to be done at all, your method looks like the way forward. Simple, easy to understand and implement in browsers. I don't really agree with pre-fetching (I think it's a waste of bandwidth and could be a security risk in certain circumstances), but I'd like to think there was some coherent way to manage it if it is going to become ubiquitous.