They will have a hard time claiming that a DVD player is only useful for making illegal copies:)
That's an interesting point, and I hadn't really thought of it... it would be a hard argument to say that since the source is available, it could be made into a piracy tool...:)
But is their main argument that piracy is now possible, or that a trade secret was stolen? If it's the trade secret angle, they'd go after an integrated player, as well. ----
The case is NOT about DeCSS - it's about decrypting the DVDs. DeCSS is just an example... if they win, you can bet they'll go after css-auth and everything similar...
I don't think anyone is really arguing that DeCSS, specifically, needs to be enshrined... ----
Does anyone out there have examples to back me up or disprove me?
Well, take Netscape, for example... there's some messy code that didn't really help the project. They wound up doing it again from scratch (if I understand correctly) and they lost a year or so.
Ok so now I'm contradicting myself from my post below:) ----
Ok, I can sympathize a bit - they can release whatever they want, or nothing, under any license they choose. But I'm SICK of hearing "it's too complicated for you to understand."
They have the balls to tell the likes of Alan Cox and John Carmack that "it's too complicated for you?!" That's just crap. It's a lie, it's a cop-out, and I'm tired of hearing it.
Binary plugins for XFree will be a very interesting development, and a slippery slope, I think. I DO NOT LIKE the notion of a bug that can't be fixed except by someone who may or may not care.
I had an old Asus motherboard that couldn't run an AGP TNT card due to the inordinate amount of power required... on the other hand, though, hasn't someone come out with a video card that actually has a hard-drive style power connector on it? ----
This guy's entire argument seems to be based on the (false) assumption that corporations are not legally bound by contracts/licences as individuals are.
I don't think that's what he's saying. I think he's painted this scenario:
A corporation takes some GPL'd code and modifies it, but doesn't distribute it, so they're not required to share their changes.
Anyone can join this corporation - all you have to do is ask, and agree that you will not distribute any of the corporation's secrets - for example, the details of their software.
Turns out this "corporation" exists solely to modify, but not distribute GPL'd code, so if you want access to said code, you must join the corporation and swear to secrecy.
A bit far fetched, perhaps, but I think that's what he's saying. ----
That is why Glint (which was the graphical pagkage manager software people used to use to install RPM packages, including updates and bugfixes) was broken on the Red Hat 5.0 CD-ROMs, right?
If you had to dig back to 5.0 to find an example of poor QA, I'd say they're doing pretty well.
Also, security fixes are just a little bit more important than a touchy feely GUI on top of a touchy feely package installer... so I'd imagine that they put more effort into that.:) (Although I don't know what was broken about Glint - it didn't format your drives, did it?) ----
I mean - people are willing to call a complete stranger on the phone, and give them their credit card number. Same goes with a waiter in a restaurant, for example. I guess there's more potential for abuse online, since a list of 1000's of numbers might be available... but using a credit card in almost *any* fashion has the potential for abuse or theft. ----
While the goal behind css-auth was to unlock the damn things so that they could be played under Linux, the fact remains that once unlocked, they can be copied. It's not economically feasible to make a true DVD-quality copy at this point, because of storage expense. However, downsampling them to mpeg-1 for VCD's is now possible.
On the other hand, this isn't that much different from people making crappy copies of VHS tapes by doing a tape to tape copy...
But I agree with you that if we pretend that NO form of piracy exists as a result of this code, we will get burned. ----
I'd say that the main thing to realize is that if this is a start-up, those options are worth ZERO DOLLARS until your company is either bought by a public company, or goes public.
Several of these posts are from people who seem to have received options in a company that is already public - this is almost never a bad thing, because they usually have some value at the time of the grant, and they're on TOP of a salary, not instead of a salary.
Options can't really decrease in value - if you receive options on 1000 shares at $10, and the stock goes to $20, then you've made 1000x($20-$10)=$10,000. However, if the stock goes below $10, then your options are said to be "underwater" and they are worthless - you haven't lost money on the options, but you haven't made any, either.
As to how long you have to keep them, that's up to your company. I have received options from my (public) company as an incentive to stay with the company, and they vested (became exerciseable) after 3 years, and I had a 5 year window after that in which I could exercise them. My company's stock went from $13/share to $135/share, so I've done pretty well.
So, as another poster said, if you think there's a good chance that your company will be successful and go IPO or get bought, you could make a nice sum. If it doesn't, you'll have $0. I'd suggest asking for a salary you can live on, and see if you can get options on top of that. ----
If you don't need a manual, you can get a CD for less than five bucks from Cheapbytes and the like
Sure, but would they? This is the Apple strategy of getting the product into the schools. Most schools are probably not even aware of Cheapbytes - if they're aware of Linux at all. It's not a bad deal for the school, and it's not a bad deal for Red Hat. Sure, perhaps it's a bit of a PR stunt, but it's pretty cool, too. ----
They should be downloading everything for free anyway.
What, on their T1s, right? The school my wife taught at didn't even have modem access as far as I know... Yes, getting free CD distribution and a manuala WOULD be a very big deal to a lot of these schools. ----
Yes, you know how to set up IP Masq correctly... but if I recall correctly, there were some free versions of WinGate (or somesuch thing) that defaulted to allowing connections from anywhere on any interface - and the free version did NOT allow you to log connections. People sniffed them out, and the fun began.
I agree with you, though, that for @Home to start taking action on this only after the UDP threat is inexcusable. ----
Josh Pieper just announced on the v4l-list that he has put together an MMX enhanced mpg1 encoder - to the tune of an 85% speed improvement:
Hello all,
For those of you creating mpeg-1 movies out there, I have added some preliminary MMX optimizations to the stock Berkely MPEG-1 encoder. I have obtained about an 85% speedup on my tests compressing videocd data. Up to 6.9 fps, from 3.7 fps on my PII 333.
I have used this together with a stdout-enabled mpeg2decode to recompress mp1e created streams at lower rates. It has no MMX detection, and I am not an intel performance expert, so it's not all the way optimized. I figured it could save some of you quite a few clock cycles.
They don't want to have to deal with supporting people trying to figure out the specs, so they choose to just not release them.
Dave does seem like a reasonable guy, but I hate hearing this "we need to protect you" kind of stuff... Ok, fine, it's complicated. Let the XFree/GLX guys have a shot at it anyway. Fine, no support. Say it in big, bold letters, and ignore any inquiries. NO SUPPORT. Fine! I bet there are a lot of people who would LOVE to see the specs with no support...:/ ----
Your link (http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rul emaker000106.htm?ref=yhoolnk) give referrer credit to yahoo (ref=yhoolnk) - you'd think Slashdot would either want to strip that, or get credit themselves...?:) Just a thought. ----
Hrm, I see your point - sort of. If your 190GHz Athlon can't run GnomeIII, then why aren't you running WindowReMaker? You've got the source, and it only requires 10GHz.
Skip Mozilla 18.63, too - Armadillo surpassed it in speed and stability long ago.
As for your boss, just happily tell him you're running Red Hat (keep the splash screen) and run your BSD. With the Linux acceleration layer, nobody will know.
My point - open source is open source, and I could care less who buys what company, for the most part. ----
Ok, ok, I get it!:) I promise to do that next time. As I said, though, I wanted to make sure that I didn't bother the list with something unimportant, and it's hard for me to tell sometimes...
I'm always a bit afraid to send in a bug report, because I'm not sure I know enough to put together a good one, and I don't want to increase the static on the list...
I did get a kernel oops that seemed ext2 related, and sent it to the ext2 maintaner, but got no reply.
Any suggestions on what I could do to:
1) be sure this really was a bug, and 2) formulate a useful bug report?
This last time, I got a whole slew of:
Jan 1 10:44:05 Lager kernel: EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,7)): ext2_add_entry: bad entry in directory #11873: rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=0, inode =11873, rec_len=6, name_len=1
entries in the log, and there were in fact several problems when I fsck'd. (This was with 2.2.13) Also, interesting (but probably unrelated) datapoint... it was the postfix files/directories that were damaged each time... ----
not unless you need to fix a bug, or gain a feature.:)
if your system is running ok, do you still need to upgrade?
See above.
I'm not actually planning on doing it, as I'm not proficient enough to recompile and replace a kernel yet, but I need to know how soon I have to try and take this step. You should look at the kernel HOWTO at www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO - it's a bit daunting at first, but it's really not that difficult. The main reason to recompile your kernel is to tailor it exactly to your needs, removing all the cruft that doesn't apply to your system. Plus, as someone said, you'll never be a real Linux user until you do.:) ----
Slashdot Mirror
They will have a hard time claiming that a DVD player is only useful for making illegal copies :)
:)
That's an interesting point, and I hadn't really thought of it... it would be a hard argument to say that since the source is available, it could be made into a piracy tool...
But is their main argument that piracy is now possible, or that a trade secret was stolen? If it's the trade secret angle, they'd go after an integrated player, as well.
----
The case is NOT about DeCSS - it's about decrypting the DVDs. DeCSS is just an example... if they win, you can bet they'll go after css-auth and everything similar...
I don't think anyone is really arguing that DeCSS, specifically, needs to be enshrined...
----
Does anyone out there have examples to back me up or disprove me?
:)
Well, take Netscape, for example... there's some messy code that didn't really help the project. They wound up doing it again from scratch (if I understand correctly) and they lost a year or so.
Ok so now I'm contradicting myself from my post below
----
Ok, I can sympathize a bit - they can release whatever they want, or nothing, under any license they choose. But I'm SICK of hearing "it's too complicated for you to understand."
They have the balls to tell the likes of Alan Cox and John Carmack that "it's too complicated for you?!" That's just crap. It's a lie, it's a cop-out, and I'm tired of hearing it.
Binary plugins for XFree will be a very interesting development, and a slippery slope, I think. I DO NOT LIKE the notion of a bug that can't be fixed except by someone who may or may not care.
Ok no more ranting from me tonight.
----
I had an old Asus motherboard that couldn't run an AGP TNT card due to the inordinate amount of power required... on the other hand, though, hasn't someone come out with a video card that actually has a hard-drive style power connector on it?
----
I thought I needed a 550 MHz Pentium III to enhance my web experience... :D
----
This guy's entire argument seems to be based on the (false) assumption that corporations are not legally bound by contracts/licences as individuals are.
I don't think that's what he's saying. I think he's painted this scenario:
A corporation takes some GPL'd code and modifies it, but doesn't distribute it, so they're not required to share their changes.
Anyone can join this corporation - all you have to do is ask, and agree that you will not distribute any of the corporation's secrets - for example, the details of their software.
Turns out this "corporation" exists solely to modify, but not distribute GPL'd code, so if you want access to said code, you must join the corporation and swear to secrecy.
A bit far fetched, perhaps, but I think that's what he's saying.
----
That is why Glint (which was the graphical pagkage manager software people used to use to install RPM packages, including updates and bugfixes) was broken on the Red Hat 5.0 CD-ROMs, right?
:)
If you had to dig back to 5.0 to find an example of poor QA, I'd say they're doing pretty well.
Also, security fixes are just a little bit more important than a touchy feely GUI on top of a touchy feely package installer... so I'd imagine that they put more effort into that.
(Although I don't know what was broken about Glint - it didn't format your drives, did it?)
----
I mean - people are willing to call a complete stranger on the phone, and give them their credit card number. Same goes with a waiter in a restaurant, for example. I guess there's more potential for abuse online, since a list of 1000's of numbers might be available... but using a credit card in almost *any* fashion has the potential for abuse or theft.
----
While the goal behind css-auth was to unlock the damn things so that they could be played under Linux, the fact remains that once unlocked, they can be copied. It's not economically feasible to make a true DVD-quality copy at this point, because of storage expense. However, downsampling them to mpeg-1 for VCD's is now possible.
On the other hand, this isn't that much different from people making crappy copies of VHS tapes by doing a tape to tape copy...
But I agree with you that if we pretend that NO form of piracy exists as a result of this code, we will get burned.
----
I'd say that the main thing to realize is that if this is a start-up, those options are worth ZERO DOLLARS until your company is either bought by a public company, or goes public.
Several of these posts are from people who seem to have received options in a company that is already public - this is almost never a bad thing, because they usually have some value at the time of the grant, and they're on TOP of a salary, not instead of a salary.
Options can't really decrease in value - if you receive options on 1000 shares at $10, and the stock goes to $20, then you've made 1000x($20-$10)=$10,000. However, if the stock goes below $10, then your options are said to be "underwater" and they are worthless - you haven't lost money on the options, but you haven't made any, either.
As to how long you have to keep them, that's up to your company. I have received options from my (public) company as an incentive to stay with the company, and they vested (became exerciseable) after 3 years, and I had a 5 year window after that in which I could exercise them. My company's stock went from $13/share to $135/share, so I've done pretty well.
So, as another poster said, if you think there's a good chance that your company will be successful and go IPO or get bought, you could make a nice sum. If it doesn't, you'll have $0. I'd suggest asking for a salary you can live on, and see if you can get options on top of that.
----
If you don't need a manual, you can get a CD for less than five bucks from Cheapbytes and the like
Sure, but would they? This is the Apple strategy of getting the product into the schools. Most schools are probably not even aware of Cheapbytes - if they're aware of Linux at all. It's not a bad deal for the school, and it's not a bad deal for Red Hat. Sure, perhaps it's a bit of a PR stunt, but it's pretty cool, too.
----
They should be downloading everything for free anyway.
What, on their T1s, right? The school my wife taught at didn't even have modem access as far as I know... Yes, getting free CD distribution and a manuala WOULD be a very big deal to a lot of these schools.
----
Yes, you know how to set up IP Masq correctly... but if I recall correctly, there were some free versions of WinGate (or somesuch thing) that defaulted to allowing connections from anywhere on any interface - and the free version did NOT allow you to log connections. People sniffed them out, and the fun began.
I agree with you, though, that for @Home to start taking action on this only after the UDP threat is inexcusable.
----
How many copies of ws_ftp are there? Like a dozen.
3
:)
Great! Use the one you like best.
And they are all worse than the original windows clone.
Hm, have you tried IglooFTP? http://www.littleigloo.org/iglooftp_downloads.php
And... what's the "original windows clone?"
Not to mention how many are still alpha/beta code. I nearly had a heart attack when icewm hit version 1.0.
It must be rough to have your life so constrained by version numbers...
----
(You need the new I2C stack from the lm_sensors package for this, though)
----
----
Dave does seem like a reasonable guy, but I hate hearing this "we need to protect you" kind of stuff... Ok, fine, it's complicated. Let the XFree/GLX guys have a shot at it anyway. Fine, no support. Say it in big, bold letters, and ignore any inquiries. NO SUPPORT. Fine! I bet there are a lot of people who would LOVE to see the specs with no support... :/
----
Well, the link above isn't an http_referrer, technically... I'd be surprised if AtGuard or whatever would strip something out of a URL.
:)
In any case, Junkbuster works just fine for me - in Windows *and* Linux.
----
Your link (http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rul emaker000106.htm?ref=yhoolnk) give referrer credit to yahoo (ref=yhoolnk) - you'd think Slashdot would either want to strip that, or get credit themselves...? :) Just a thought.
----
Hrm, I see your point - sort of. If your 190GHz Athlon can't run GnomeIII, then why aren't you running WindowReMaker? You've got the source, and it only requires 10GHz.
Skip Mozilla 18.63, too - Armadillo surpassed it in speed and stability long ago.
As for your boss, just happily tell him you're running Red Hat (keep the splash screen) and run your BSD. With the Linux acceleration layer, nobody will know.
My point - open source is open source, and I could care less who buys what company, for the most part.
----
I figured security fixes were lumped in with bug fixes, but I get your point. :)
----
Ok, ok, I get it! :) I promise to do that next time. As I said, though, I wanted to make sure that I didn't bother the list with something unimportant, and it's hard for me to tell sometimes...
Compiling 2.2.14 as we speak....
----
I'm always a bit afraid to send in a bug report, because I'm not sure I know enough to put together a good one, and I don't want to increase the static on the list...
I did get a kernel oops that seemed ext2 related, and sent it to the ext2 maintaner, but got no reply.
Any suggestions on what I could do to:
1) be sure this really was a bug, and
2) formulate a useful bug report?
This last time, I got a whole slew of:
Jan 1 10:44:05 Lager kernel: EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,7)): ext2_add_entry:
bad entry in directory #11873: rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=0, inode
=11873, rec_len=6, name_len=1
entries in the log, and there were in fact several problems when I fsck'd. (This was with 2.2.13) Also, interesting (but probably unrelated) datapoint... it was the postfix files/directories that were damaged each time...
----
To either fix bugs, or to gain features
is that something you need to do a lot?
not unless you need to fix a bug, or gain a feature. :)
if your system is running ok, do you still need to upgrade?
See above.
I'm not actually planning on doing it, as I'm not proficient enough to recompile and replace a kernel yet, but I need to know how soon I have to try and take this step. :)
You should look at the kernel HOWTO at www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO - it's a bit daunting at first, but it's really not that difficult. The main reason to recompile your kernel is to tailor it exactly to your needs, removing all the cruft that doesn't apply to your system. Plus, as someone said, you'll never be a real Linux user until you do.
----