Some of this stuff is really old. Seriously, do we really need both awk and nawk? HP-UX standardized on nawk, but really we should all just switch to gawk.
Along these lines, it's time to remove every SysV utility that can be replaced by a GNU equivalent. Every commercial UNIX should be doing this.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,...
As old as this stuff is, removing it would place a monstrous burden on untold numbers of sysadmins and programmers out there. Believe it or not, very many of them are critically dependent on utilities that are really old. They wrote scripts eons ago that work well, and their systems depend on them. They would be hamstrung to the point of desperation if they disappeared.
A central part of RMS's argument is his contention that the Linux kernel is a part of the GNU project, the project to build a Unix operating system consisting entirely of GPL'd software. Everything he says presupposes that this is the case.
Did Linux Torvalds ever say or write anything to the effect that he was contributing to the GNU project? As I remember the history, Linus was dissatisfied with the Unix OS's available for x86 architectures at the time, so he decided to build his own. But IIRC he never intended it as a contribution to what the FSF was doing.
Here's what I think this is all about: The FSF set about the GNU project and failed to complete it, because they failed to get the Hurd kernel finished for very many years. Linus came along and developed his kernel, and decided to GPL it, but did so for reasons unrelated to the FSF effort. Since it was GPL'd, and since the FSF failed to get their own kernel done, RMS found it convenient to declare that the Linux kernel is a part of GNU, filling the gap that they couldn't fill.
This is why RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always struck me as an act of intellectual dihonesty akin to plagiarism. He's trying to appropriate the credit for someone else's efforts.
Of course, that impression is false if my understanding is incorrect, and Linus did intend to contribute a kernel to the GNU project. So I'd appreciate it if someone could correct if I'm wrong.
Osama bin Laden? Jimmy Hoffa? Jim Morrison? Marilyn Monroe? Chandra Levy? Deep Throat? Elvis?
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
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The First Smiley :-)
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· Score: 2
"The smiley is an attack on writers and readers alike. If it is funny, it doesn't need a smiley. If is not funny, a smiley won't help it. The smiley teaches writers that anything they write will pass as humor as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent." -- Jim Showalter
The exclamation point is an attack on writers and readers alike. If it's emphatic, it doesn't need an exclamation point. If it's not emphatic, an exclamation point won't help it. The exclamation point teaches writers that anything they write will pass as forceful as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent.
I pine for the days when we just had bullet lists of black text against gray backgrounds.
No images, no tables (which are just abused as layout devices), no background colors, no fonts, no frames, no Javascript, no popups.
Just bare-bones INFORMATION, boring to look at but useful and efficient. Hardly a byte that wasn't relevant, and easily rendered on any browser you can imagine.
Did M$ ship IE with a "corrupt" JVM, i'd sure bet they did.
SO WHAT?
BECAUSE IT WAS ILLEGAL FOR THEM TO DO SO, THAT'S WHAT!
There are license restrictions clearly stating what kinds of software implementations may legally be designated as "Java". You can implement something that looks rather similar to Java, but does not fulfill all of the restrictions, and call it "Dagobert Duck", if you so desire. You can, for example, fail to fulfill cross-platform compatibility -- the central, principle design concept of Java -- and you can fail to implement technologies that the license explicitly requires, such as RMI. But if you do such things and refer to the resulting product as "Java", you are contravening the license and VIOLATING THE LAW!
AND THAT'S WHAT MICRO$OFT DID! THAT'S WHAT MICRO$OFT WAS CONVICTED FOR!
(Hey, the other guy indulged in all the capital letters, I'm just following his lead.)
I must say that I am amazed, absolutely astonished at some of the cluelessness manifesting itself in this thread. In the rush to insist that M$ never did anything wrong, and that it was all failings of Java that did it in, some of you are willing to overlook the fact that M$ has, a number of times, been found GUILTY in COURTS OF LAW.
This happened because the law forbids M$ from doing things that they just went right ahead and did. Don't some of you see a certain problem with that?
It's not just that M$ ILLEGALLY distributed a "corrupt" JVM. As Judge Jackson argued through the entire course of his Findings of Fact in the anti-trust case (all of which were re-affirmed by the appeals courts), M$'s assault on Java was a centerpiece, perhaps *the* central motive, of their anti-competitive actions in the late 90's. The Netscape browser itself didn't bother them so much; it was the combination of Netscape and Java that scared them to death, and drove them to ILLEGAL actions.
Java delivered over Netscape threatened to overcome the "applications barrier to entry" that sustains the Windows monopoly: applications vendors are unwilling to develop for an OS with low market share, but if there aren't enough interesting apps for an OS, then people won't want it, and the market share won't increase. However, if it's possible to deliver apps in a way that renders the OS irrelevant, then consumers may realize that they don't have to have the monopoly OS in order to do things they want to do on their computer. They could just as well have another OS; and thus the monopoly could be broken. This was the scenario that Java over Netscape posed; in fact, it's one of the main things that Sun explicitly had in mind, and hence the license for JVM implementations requires that the features that enable cross-platform compatibility be implemented.
M$ certainly understood. They noticed that both Netscape and Java were becoming very popular (they really were at the time), and they were profoundly alarmed. And so they set out to undermine both technologies, even though they didn't have alternatives at the time that consumers regarded as superior. They found ways to get the job done.
Don't take my word on this, folks, it's all in the court records. Bill Gates and his cohorts sent each other email saying more or less exactly what they were up to.
Many of you are saying that weaknesses in Java and Netscape are responsible for their lack of success. And indeed, both of them had their weaknesses. But doesn't it occur to you that you may be confusing cause and effect? What if M$ hadn't thrown all of it's trillion-dollar-weight into illegally undermining their competitors; would they have had the chance to improve on their mistakes? What if, in particular, Netscape (which had been a for-profit software vendor) had not seen its revenue stream throttled, starving them of the capital needed to invest in more and better development?
We can never know what might have happened if M$ had played fairly -- that is to say, LEGALLY. But they did what they did, it was AGAINST THE LAW, and hence both Sun and AOL (as the current owner of Netscape) have valid claims to redress.
Remember, these are not just my own opinions I'm stating here. They are also the opinions of numerous judges, whose job it is to closely examine evidence and render legal opinions. Micro$oft is GUILTY; they were a ruthless corporate crook long before Enron and Worldcom came along and made it fashionable. The findings and evidence are out there in the public record, folks, go see for yourselves.
Your successor
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Ask Larry Wall
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Like Linus Torvalds, you are the alpha programmer, the founder and "benevolent dictator" of a major open source project. Of course, both projects now have large and well-structured teams of developers with many recognized leaders, but nevertheless, everyone looks to both you and Linus for guidance and leadership, and everyone accepts that you have the final say in issues of dispute.
The open source movement hasn't been around long enough for us to witness the transition to a new top dog in a worldwide, highly visible project, so we all have to wonder sometimes what will happen when you and Linus decide to pass the baton, and how it will be handled. Have you decided what has to happen for you to retire from the Perl project? Or do you think you'll be hanging in there at 75 and above, a John Lee Hooker of programming languages, until the day you flop over your keyboard? Do you think that you'll hand over the scepter to a successor at the pinnacle, or do you think Perl can be taken over by some kind of committee? Doesn't there have to be an individual who has final say on important and possibly controversial decisions? Do you think the developer community will accept a new leader on your sayso, or will there have to be some sort of election? And if you do consider choosing a successor, what will your criteria be?
BTW, I'm an atheist, but I hope you don't mind my saying God bless you for creating Perl.:-)
The guy read a statistic in the newspaper, and admits that he hasn't checked it himself for accuracy. If it is reliable, then it reflects a larger decline in music sales then he had anticipated, and so failing any other explanation, he speculates that it might be attributable to file copying. But he has done no analysis at all on this result, and when the Andrew Leonard presses him on it (good for you, Andrew, but this also shows why your interview is hardly newsworthy), he admits that there may be any number of alternative causes.
Michael, why do you bother to post something like this to Slashdot? We can draw no conclusions from this at all, because there is no evidence here to speak of. I'm not saying that it's impossible that file sharing may be damaging music sales, but this article gives us no reason to conclude that it's really happening.
I really thought that geeks had a better understandng of statistics, and when they do or do not give real evidence of possible underlying causes, than most people have. Of course, numbers are terribly tempting, they create such a powerful feeling of objectivity and proof; but they can also create myths that are nearly impossible to debunk because "everybody says so" and "I heard it on the news" and it all sounds so believable.
The media, and that includes Slashdot, have a strong role in creating such myths by simply regurgitating statistical claims without any regard to the quality of the analysis. Michael, you have some editorial discretion, and you ought to use it. I'm not saying that Slashdot shouldn't post articles on the subject, but I think they certainly shouldn't bother if it just means that untrustworthy claims of fact get propagated further.
... If she is, then for the equivalent price of the ring, give her the most bitchin' state-of-the-art piece of computer hardware you can get your hands on.
It'll have to be a laptop, of course, with gigahertz and gigabytes out the wazoo, more pixels and colors then there are Chinese, and more gadgets hooked in then you can fit into the room.
You'll have to install her favorite distro, of course, and lay out the desktops and workspaces just the way she likes it, all of this before she sits down the first time. And get the MP3 playlists set up so the she finds everything she's looking for in no more than two clicks.
But if she's not a geek, well, hm, then I guess you better go get the diamond.
back-in-the-day-life-was-great dept.
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1985 Usenet About Y2k
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Here's where I get modded down for geezerness, but heavens to Betsy, Usenet was great back then. Back before the Internet exploded and innocence was lost.
Here we see a Usenet thread, with thoughtful and interesting responses from knowledgeable, experienced people at universities and research institutes. No flame wars, no snot-nosed kids from AOL, no spamming, no hot grits or Natalie Portman, no ranting about how Usenet is a mysterious cabal of Illuminati scheming to rob our freedoms and kill our firstborn.
I wasn't around in the nerdy, cliquish days of 1985 (I'm not that old!), but I did see the early 90's -- when Usenet was still a respectable hangout for serious and informative disussion -- dissolve into the mid 90's -- when all hell broke loose. It was exciting, and only logical, to see such a useful medium become so popular, but now the spammers and ranters and schemers have completely taken over. There are still a few pearls in there these days, but you have to go look for them in that enormous, stinking pile of shit.
I used to use the 'vi' binding in 'nn', which gave me a full curses screen to type my posts. Now I type Slashdot comments in this puny little HTML textarea. What has the world come to?
You wonder why the third world hates you? You wonder why a bunch of crazy arabs fly planes into your buildings?
I'm all ears, theolein, and this better be good. You're going to tell us now why mass murder is justified, right? Three thousand people all killed at once, not chosen because they are responsible for anything the US government did, but just because they showed up for work one day. Silly me, I would have thought that there is no conceivable excuse for such an atrocity, but you apparently know better. Maybe tomorrow you'll tell us why six million Jews deserved to be murdered, but one thing at a time.
And your answer is...
Because your government tries to force pepsi cola down the throats of the world and Microsoft onto the desktops of a country which is so poor that windowsXP costs several months salary if most of the people had jobs which they don't.
Well, what do you know. Would you mind explaining to, say, a six-year-old orphan that his mother or father had to die because of Pepsi Cola and Windows XP?
And you have the nerve to criticize others as righteous!
Theolein, or whatever the hell your name is, I simply do not have the words to describe what a depraved, subhuman, piece of trash you are. I couldn't despise a Nazi more than you.
Everyone has the right to hate the US as much as they want, and I happen to agree that Bush is righteous and corrupt and that he and Gates can go fuck themselves. But nothing, absolutely nothing, can possibly justify what this country had to take on September 11th, and certainly nothing as puny as cola and software. When you start to come across with that kind of hatred and rage then you are the problem, you are far worse than Bush or Gates could ever be.
That is one of the most contentless articles I have seen in a long time.
A regex is a type 3 grammar. Type 3 grammars haven't really changed since Chomsky's time.
You get a B-, Bunky. And here's your cookie.
After you've finished your untergrad CS theory class, you might go on to discover that implementations of regexes under various paradigms and in the various languages have extremely rich variety regarding syntax, semantics and efficiency. This isn't about the pristine theory of Prof. Chomsky, but about the actual use of regexes as programming constructs, and that's a tremendously complex subject. Friedl's book in the first edition is one of the best I've ever seen that has tackled such complexity and made it accessible and useful for the everyday business of programming.
The article indicates that the practical use of regexes, far from stagnating since Chomsky's time, continues to evolve and grow. That's only "contentless" if you're stuck in the ivory tower and don't intend to leave.
Anyone know if Mitnick was ever questioned or tried for his hacking in Las Vegas? If he has stated under oath that he didn't do any of that stuff, he might be risking a perjury charge -- unless the statute of limitations has run out on that as well.
BTW, this testimony is a real-world example of what "white-hat" hacking is supposed to be all about -- exposing security weaknesses that might be exploited by others. Of course, Mitnick might have had his black hat on back in the day when he was doing it.
Anyway, the really stunning thing is that, of all the media outlets, MSNBC points out that just one of Microsoft's poor design decisions has cost consumers $8.75 billion, and wonders why nobody has sued.
I find it really stunning that jamie, one of the Slashdot editors, has posted such a comment. It shouldn't be stunning at all; and if jamie thinks it is, I wonder about the relationship between Slashdot's editorial staff and OSDN (the company that owns Slashdot).
Presumably, MSNBC wants to be regarded as a journalistic enterprise, and not a marketing instrument for their owners. That means that they must scrupulously and uncompromisingly see to it that the commercial interests of Microsoft and NBC do not interfere with their editorial decisions; if they find it newsworthy to publish reports critical of their owners, then they must do that, and let them suffer the consequences. Anything else would be a scandal, and a devastating blow to MSNBC's credibility.
Not to say that this doesn't happen to journalistic businesses sometimes, but when it does, it is properly viewed as corruption, and the reputation of that business deservedly suffers. A good example of this is portrayed in the film The Insider with Al Pacino and Russel Crowe. It's about CBS's attempt to quash a "60 Minutes" story exposing the tobacco industry's deliberate efforts to make cigarettes more addictive than they already are, because they feared getting sued, and because (IIRC) their parent company Westinghouse was planning a major deal with Brown & Williamson. CBS was villified for it, and deserved it. I recommend the film highly to anyone interested in freedom of speech and the duties of the press.
But jamie thinks that such a thing is really stunning. I hope that, despite that, there is a similar wall standing between Slashdot's editorial decisions and the interests of its owner. If someone submitted a story to Slashdot that's critical of OSDN, would they publish it?
Viruses, security holes and general indifference about computer security; price-gouging licensing schemes; BSA audits; FUD about open source software; and now a breach of the privacy of Hotmail users (not to mention increasingly poor service for Hotmail). And then there's the antitrust trial, with revelations of threats and retaliation against OEM's, ISP's and software vendors; arrogant definace of the DOJ and the courts; no willingness to compomise, no insight or remorse; fabricated evidence in the courtroom; and Bill Gates on his deposition video in a seething rage, rocking back and forth in his chair, playing ignorant and obstinate, claiming not to understand simple words and not to remember crucial business decisions, only to be squarely contradicted by his own email.
When the Church of $cientology began a few years ago to confront their critics on the Internet, some of the critics began to refer to their campaign as Operation Footbullet, because the Co$ simply blundered again and again in highly public fashion. Their corruption and outright craziness became more obvious than ever before to anyone who cared to look.
Has the Micro$oft Corporation been conducting its own Operation Footbullet? Up until about two or three years ago, much of this was ignored by the media and there was almost no awareness of their excesses in the general public. And of course many people still don't pay much attention to the software industry. But anyone who pays the least bit of attention is faced with a constant stream of reports about ruthlessness and frankly criminal behavior, a profound lack of respect for consumers and business partners, and a general stench of unethical behavior that can only be overpowered by Enron's awful stink. I suppose Enron is ahead of M$ on the scales of immorality, but nevertheless, M$ is risking going down in history as one of the greediest and most ruthless plutocrats since the the robber barons of the railroad and Standard Oil days -- and those are the ones who've held the record for over a hundred years!
Of course, some people will respond that I'm exaggerating. I'll probably even get modded as Flamebait or Troll. And indeed, it really is hard to state the case against Micro$oft without sounding like a zealot, because the accusations are simply so hair-raising, it's hard for the uninitiated to believe that they're all true (this is, in fact, what I used to think about the Church of $cientology). Judge Jackson should not have shot his mouth off the way he did, but who could blame the man, he probably just couldn't help himself. The awful fact is that M$ is one of the most appalling corporate gangsters in all of history.
The submitter, apparently addressing the community of Slashdot readers, finishes with this question:
What is the likelihood of bacterial life on Mars infecting the earth if we ever get around to visiting Mars in person?
All right, Mr. Submitter, I'll answer your question: I haven't the foggiest idea. I've learned a little here or there about microorganisms and their possible existence outside of the Earth during my lifetime, and I regard myself as a relatively intelligent person, and tend to have strong opinions about most anything, including stuff I don't know much about. But the awful truth is that I'm not the least bit qualified to speculate on the likelihood of extraterrestrial infections on Earth. That's not an informative answer, I admit, but it's honest, and I daresay a great deal more honest than nearly all of the responses you've received so far.
To be sure, there have been a few replies so far that seem to be thoughtful and well-informed, and perhaps they come from people who really are qualified to answer the question; but like I said, I'm not really qualified to make that evaluation. Almost all of the rest, it seems to me, are comments from people who may be relatively intelligent, may have read a thing or two about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and have all kinds of strong opinions about anything, and now they are speculating with wild abandon. Which is fun, but they will give you almost no reliable answers to your question, and may lead you completely astray.
You probably wouldn't be having this problem if you had posted this question in a forum about "News for Molecular Biologists, Stuff That Matters to Astrophysicists". Why did you expect you expect to get any useful answers here?
... I would be raising as much hell with its management and board as I possibly could. I'd demand an emergency shareholders meeting, to be held immediately, and I'd bring rotten eggs and tomatoes to greet the management. I'd be lobbying the other shareholders to organize a class action suit against the management for violation of their fiduciary obligations. And I'd be looking for ways to get the hell out of the investment, before the company goes bankrupt and the stock price drops to zero.
The management of Divine is killing the company, because when you alienate your best talent, you're cutting your own throat. There is no surer way to demolish a company's long-term ability to compete and survive. I've seen it happen several times. The attempt for short-term savings and profitability will cause permanent and irreparable damage in the long run. This is not the way to solve the problem.
Insightful?! Insight is the one thing that is nowhere to be found in this post.
Just cause innocent civilians were the target of an attack, what gives them the right to go out and kill? Think about it, why is it right for the US to go out and slaughter people? It's not. They've already killed innocent civilians, violence solves nothing. They're doing exactly what the al-queda (sp?) did to them. They have become terrorists.
mar1no, or whatever your name is, and you too Mr. Moderator, the two of you are so fundamentally unable to distinguish right from wrong that I wonder if you might be capable of heinous crimes yourself. I'm not using a figure of speech here.
I have certainly never refrained from criticizing the US for the numerous stupidities it has indulged in over the years, and God knows we have an idiot for a president now. But whether I like the guy or not, what he did as an immediate response to the 9/11 attack was exactly what had to be done.
What gives the US the right to respond to mass murder with force, you ask? You tell me, what gives law enforcement the right to use force in the apprehension of a murderer who is resisting arrest? Do you believe that murderers should go free?
I'm a strong believer in peaceful resolution of conflicts, but the awful fact is that human history occasionally produces people who simply go on murdering until somebody forcibly stops them. The existence of Hitler and bin Laden and the Nazis and Al Qaida are the awful proof of this fact. Do you think that no attempt should have been made to capture the members of Al Qaida after September 11? Tell me, what would you have done? What would you have done in the real world that we live in, with all of fanatics and fascists and mass murderers who are not interested in peace at all?
And for the love of God, where do you get this moral equivalence crap? The terrorists murdered American civilians because they are Americans, and probably because the terrorists assumed that they are all Christians. Bin Laden put it in precisely those terms. But the US has used deadly force in an attempt to catch mass murderers who are resisting with deadly force; the US has not sought not to kill anyone merely because he or she is Arab or Moslem.
The Al Qaida terrorists used airplanes full of civilians as missiles, to murder even more civilians. Tell me, when has the US put hundreds of civilians on board the missiles it has used in warfare? When has the US deliberately targeted civilians at all? Some people around the world apparently believe that this happened, but I don't where on Earth they get these ideas. Even if you don't believe that there ethical motives for the US military to try to avoid civilian deaths (and I believe they do have such motives), consider the fact that the US has nothing to gain and everything to lose when innocent bystanders die. Public revulsion at civilian casualties is probably the only thing that could make the Americans lose the war; that's what happened at Vietnam. If they want to succeed in their goals against Al Qaida, they simply have to limit civilian deaths as much as they can.
Another question: Do you believe that the United States should have joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor? After reading your post, I can't rule out that you might answer no to that question, in which case you are, to put it bluntly, so stupid that I'm wasting my time. But if you are reasonable enough to agree with most people's take on history, than consider this:
IIRC there were fewer than a thousand victims at Pearl Harbor, compared to nearly three thousand on 9/11.
Pearl Harbor was clearly a military target. So is the Pentagon, but the World Trade Center, where most people died, clearly is not.
Nearly all of the victims at Pearl Harbor were military personnel. Most of the victims on 9/11 were not.
Can you enunciate a moral principle according to which the US should have joined war after Pearl Harbor, but should not have after 9/11?
As a matter of fact, there were two things that could have happened after September 11 that would have made all military action unnecessary:
The members of Al Qaida could have surrendered.
Failing that, the Taliban could have apprehended them and turned them over.
Both of these were never the least bit likely, given that members of both Al Qaida and the Taliban happen to be murderous fascists. Nevertheless, this is what Al Qaida and the Taliban were morally obliged to do, just as a murderer is obliged to surrender himself to law enforcement. Of course they didn't, and only then was the US in a situation where the use of force was necessary. And for this reason, it is Al Qaida and the Taliban who are responsible for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. By attempting to get away with mass murder, they are the ones who have placed ordinary Afghans in grave danger.
mar1no, I live over here in Europe, and I hear idiot blather like yours all the time. Are you a European, by any chance? I think people like you are arrogant and astonishly naive, living in a dream world and completely out of touch with reality. I think you are a moral midget, and above all quite simply dumb beyond my imagination. There's hardly enough I could say to express my contempt for you. You can't be trusted to come up with any serious solutions for the real problems that exist in the dangerous world we live in. And it's too bad, because the rest of the world could give GWB an earful for his mishandling of the Middle East and his stupid ideas about, God help us, the "axis of evil". But no one will listen to you, because you deserve no respect.
There seems to be a strong element of national pride that goes into ideas about who invented the computer, and where. It's a bit like Cold War-era disagreement between the US and the USSR about who invented airplanes.
I grew up in the US, where everybody swears up and down that the ENIAC was the first computer.
I've lived for a long time in Germany, where everybody swears up and down that computers were invented by Konrad Zuse.
And I've met Brits who swear up and down that the first computers were built in Manchester (maybe one of you wants to fill in the story here, eh mates?).
The common element in all this is that most people have only ever heard the heroic story about their own nation; and when confronted with one of the other legends, they conclude that the other guys are jingoistic, Orwellian distorters of history, and completely out of their minds.
I knew her vaguely when I was CS undergraduate at Duke in the 80's (her name was Melinda French then). I remember her as fairly nice, moderately pretty and relatively bland; but no, she's definitely not a hot broad. Not even close. Obviously, she can afford nicer clothes and a better hairdresser now, but there's only so much you can do, you know?
In an era where people don't tune into politics because there aren't any real issues, let's throw the whole geek-led patent issue at them. When will the geek community learn that the best way to forward geek causes is not to try and get the general populace behind them? You would think after the beatings in high school we would learn that our plights don't interest those in the "real" world.
I don't agree with you, because historically, the public has indeed taken interest when they can see evidence of government breaking down completely. Years ago, it was hard to get people worked up about the high cost of military procurement, although a lot of people knew about the mind-boggling waste of taxpayer money. Then the stories came out about the $500 toilet seats, and people took notice. This patent could become the USPTO's toilet seat.
Look, our country is in a recession. The rich are getting tax breaks. More people are living in poverty. Social security, which many in our generation believe will form the foundation of our post-retirement earnings, is in jeopardy of falling apart. There is a war against terrorism and a parallel war against human rights. When you stack the fact that out of the thousands of patents that the USPTO gives out a year, a few are silly and challengable against the real problems plaguing our country right now, I don't think we're talking an election year issue.
The preposterous situation surrounding IP these days is hindering the growth of the software industry and contributing to the recession. It really does make a difference to the average citizen, but it's difficult to explain why. (I get the impression from your post that you don't really understand that either.) It's all a matter of finding a way to communicate the message.
The last thing we need is ESR getting on national television as a representative of the geek community. If you want to talk about ways to connect geek causes with mainstream America, ESR does not enter into the conversation.
Well maybe, but some people do respond to him well. And I did mention Bruce Perens first. %^)
Can somebody put up a mirror? Or would that violate some kind of IP laws? You never know these days.
The USPTO has become such an outrage that it needs to become in issue in this year's elections. That can only happen if media attention can be drawn to absurd patents, and this is just the kind of thing to do it. Everyone can understand how preposterous this is; and then, if we're lucky, the TV news will get someone like Bruce Perens or ESR as a talking head for background, and that person can go on to say, "You know the patent office does this all the time, let me give you some more examples, and let me explain the damage that it does to our economy." It's our best chance.
If we're unlucky, they'll put on an M$ spokesmen, who will use the TV sound bite to blast the GPL as an evil, anti-capitalist plot.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
As old as this stuff is, removing it would place a monstrous burden on untold numbers of sysadmins and programmers out there. Believe it or not, very many of them are critically dependent on utilities that are really old. They wrote scripts eons ago that work well, and their systems depend on them. They would be hamstrung to the point of desperation if they disappeared.
A central part of RMS's argument is his contention that the Linux kernel is a part of the GNU project, the project to build a Unix operating system consisting entirely of GPL'd software. Everything he says presupposes that this is the case.
Did Linux Torvalds ever say or write anything to the effect that he was contributing to the GNU project? As I remember the history, Linus was dissatisfied with the Unix OS's available for x86 architectures at the time, so he decided to build his own. But IIRC he never intended it as a contribution to what the FSF was doing.
Here's what I think this is all about: The FSF set about the GNU project and failed to complete it, because they failed to get the Hurd kernel finished for very many years. Linus came along and developed his kernel, and decided to GPL it, but did so for reasons unrelated to the FSF effort. Since it was GPL'd, and since the FSF failed to get their own kernel done, RMS found it convenient to declare that the Linux kernel is a part of GNU, filling the gap that they couldn't fill.
This is why RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always struck me as an act of intellectual dihonesty akin to plagiarism. He's trying to appropriate the credit for someone else's efforts.
Of course, that impression is false if my understanding is incorrect, and Linus did intend to contribute a kernel to the GNU project. So I'd appreciate it if someone could correct if I'm wrong.
I wonder if someone could get Professor Touretzky of Carnegie-Mellon to set up a "Gallery of Warchalk Art".
Check out his Gallery of CSS Descramblers.
Osama bin Laden? Jimmy Hoffa? Jim Morrison? Marilyn Monroe? Chandra Levy? Deep Throat? Elvis?
The exclamation point is an attack on writers and readers alike. If it's emphatic, it doesn't need an exclamation point. If it's not emphatic, an exclamation point won't help it. The exclamation point teaches writers that anything they write will pass as forceful as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent.
I pine for the days when we just had bullet lists of black text against gray backgrounds.
No images, no tables (which are just abused as layout devices), no background colors, no fonts, no frames, no Javascript, no popups.
Just bare-bones INFORMATION, boring to look at but useful and efficient. Hardly a byte that wasn't relevant, and easily rendered on any browser you can imagine.
BECAUSE IT WAS ILLEGAL FOR THEM TO DO SO, THAT'S WHAT!
There are license restrictions clearly stating what kinds of software implementations may legally be designated as "Java". You can implement something that looks rather similar to Java, but does not fulfill all of the restrictions, and call it "Dagobert Duck", if you so desire. You can, for example, fail to fulfill cross-platform compatibility -- the central, principle design concept of Java -- and you can fail to implement technologies that the license explicitly requires, such as RMI. But if you do such things and refer to the resulting product as "Java", you are contravening the license and VIOLATING THE LAW!
AND THAT'S WHAT MICRO$OFT DID! THAT'S WHAT MICRO$OFT WAS CONVICTED FOR!
(Hey, the other guy indulged in all the capital letters, I'm just following his lead.)
I must say that I am amazed, absolutely astonished at some of the cluelessness manifesting itself in this thread. In the rush to insist that M$ never did anything wrong, and that it was all failings of Java that did it in, some of you are willing to overlook the fact that M$ has, a number of times, been found GUILTY in COURTS OF LAW.
This happened because the law forbids M$ from doing things that they just went right ahead and did. Don't some of you see a certain problem with that?
It's not just that M$ ILLEGALLY distributed a "corrupt" JVM. As Judge Jackson argued through the entire course of his Findings of Fact in the anti-trust case (all of which were re-affirmed by the appeals courts), M$'s assault on Java was a centerpiece, perhaps *the* central motive, of their anti-competitive actions in the late 90's. The Netscape browser itself didn't bother them so much; it was the combination of Netscape and Java that scared them to death, and drove them to ILLEGAL actions.
Java delivered over Netscape threatened to overcome the "applications barrier to entry" that sustains the Windows monopoly: applications vendors are unwilling to develop for an OS with low market share, but if there aren't enough interesting apps for an OS, then people won't want it, and the market share won't increase. However, if it's possible to deliver apps in a way that renders the OS irrelevant, then consumers may realize that they don't have to have the monopoly OS in order to do things they want to do on their computer. They could just as well have another OS; and thus the monopoly could be broken. This was the scenario that Java over Netscape posed; in fact, it's one of the main things that Sun explicitly had in mind, and hence the license for JVM implementations requires that the features that enable cross-platform compatibility be implemented.
M$ certainly understood. They noticed that both Netscape and Java were becoming very popular (they really were at the time), and they were profoundly alarmed. And so they set out to undermine both technologies, even though they didn't have alternatives at the time that consumers regarded as superior. They found ways to get the job done.
Don't take my word on this, folks, it's all in the court records. Bill Gates and his cohorts sent each other email saying more or less exactly what they were up to.
Many of you are saying that weaknesses in Java and Netscape are responsible for their lack of success. And indeed, both of them had their weaknesses. But doesn't it occur to you that you may be confusing cause and effect? What if M$ hadn't thrown all of it's trillion-dollar-weight into illegally undermining their competitors; would they have had the chance to improve on their mistakes? What if, in particular, Netscape (which had been a for-profit software vendor) had not seen its revenue stream throttled, starving them of the capital needed to invest in more and better development?
We can never know what might have happened if M$ had played fairly -- that is to say, LEGALLY. But they did what they did, it was AGAINST THE LAW, and hence both Sun and AOL (as the current owner of Netscape) have valid claims to redress.
Remember, these are not just my own opinions I'm stating here. They are also the opinions of numerous judges, whose job it is to closely examine evidence and render legal opinions. Micro$oft is GUILTY; they were a ruthless corporate crook long before Enron and Worldcom came along and made it fashionable. The findings and evidence are out there in the public record, folks, go see for yourselves.
Like Linus Torvalds, you are the alpha programmer, the founder and "benevolent dictator" of a major open source project. Of course, both projects now have large and well-structured teams of developers with many recognized leaders, but nevertheless, everyone looks to both you and Linus for guidance and leadership, and everyone accepts that you have the final say in issues of dispute.
:-)
The open source movement hasn't been around long enough for us to witness the transition to a new top dog in a worldwide, highly visible project, so we all have to wonder sometimes what will happen when you and Linus decide to pass the baton, and how it will be handled. Have you decided what has to happen for you to retire from the Perl project? Or do you think you'll be hanging in there at 75 and above, a John Lee Hooker of programming languages, until the day you flop over your keyboard? Do you think that you'll hand over the scepter to a successor at the pinnacle, or do you think Perl can be taken over by some kind of committee? Doesn't there have to be an individual who has final say on important and possibly controversial decisions? Do you think the developer community will accept a new leader on your sayso, or will there have to be some sort of election? And if you do consider choosing a successor, what will your criteria be?
BTW, I'm an atheist, but I hope you don't mind my saying God bless you for creating Perl.
The guy read a statistic in the newspaper, and admits that he hasn't checked it himself for accuracy. If it is reliable, then it reflects a larger decline in music sales then he had anticipated, and so failing any other explanation, he speculates that it might be attributable to file copying. But he has done no analysis at all on this result, and when the Andrew Leonard presses him on it (good for you, Andrew, but this also shows why your interview is hardly newsworthy), he admits that there may be any number of alternative causes.
Michael, why do you bother to post something like this to Slashdot? We can draw no conclusions from this at all, because there is no evidence here to speak of. I'm not saying that it's impossible that file sharing may be damaging music sales, but this article gives us no reason to conclude that it's really happening.
I really thought that geeks had a better understandng of statistics, and when they do or do not give real evidence of possible underlying causes, than most people have. Of course, numbers are terribly tempting, they create such a powerful feeling of objectivity and proof; but they can also create myths that are nearly impossible to debunk because "everybody says so" and "I heard it on the news" and it all sounds so believable.
The media, and that includes Slashdot, have a strong role in creating such myths by simply regurgitating statistical claims without any regard to the quality of the analysis. Michael, you have some editorial discretion, and you ought to use it. I'm not saying that Slashdot shouldn't post articles on the subject, but I think they certainly shouldn't bother if it just means that untrustworthy claims of fact get propagated further.
... If she is, then for the equivalent price of the ring, give her the most bitchin' state-of-the-art piece of computer hardware you can get your hands on.
It'll have to be a laptop, of course, with gigahertz and gigabytes out the wazoo, more pixels and colors then there are Chinese, and more gadgets hooked in then you can fit into the room.
You'll have to install her favorite distro, of course, and lay out the desktops and workspaces just the way she likes it, all of this before she sits down the first time. And get the MP3 playlists set up so the she finds everything she's looking for in no more than two clicks.
But if she's not a geek, well, hm, then I guess you better go get the diamond.
Here's where I get modded down for geezerness, but heavens to Betsy, Usenet was great back then. Back before the Internet exploded and innocence was lost.
Here we see a Usenet thread, with thoughtful and interesting responses from knowledgeable, experienced people at universities and research institutes. No flame wars, no snot-nosed kids from AOL, no spamming, no hot grits or Natalie Portman, no ranting about how Usenet is a mysterious cabal of Illuminati scheming to rob our freedoms and kill our firstborn.
I wasn't around in the nerdy, cliquish days of 1985 (I'm not that old!), but I did see the early 90's -- when Usenet was still a respectable hangout for serious and informative disussion -- dissolve into the mid 90's -- when all hell broke loose. It was exciting, and only logical, to see such a useful medium become so popular, but now the spammers and ranters and schemers have completely taken over. There are still a few pearls in there these days, but you have to go look for them in that enormous, stinking pile of shit.
I used to use the 'vi' binding in 'nn', which gave me a full curses screen to type my posts. Now I type Slashdot comments in this puny little HTML textarea. What has the world come to?
And your answer is
And you have the nerve to criticize others as righteous!
Theolein, or whatever the hell your name is, I simply do not have the words to describe what a depraved, subhuman, piece of trash you are. I couldn't despise a Nazi more than you.
Everyone has the right to hate the US as much as they want, and I happen to agree that Bush is righteous and corrupt and that he and Gates can go fuck themselves. But nothing, absolutely nothing, can possibly justify what this country had to take on September 11th, and certainly nothing as puny as cola and software. When you start to come across with that kind of hatred and rage then you are the problem, you are far worse than Bush or Gates could ever be.
After you've finished your untergrad CS theory class, you might go on to discover that implementations of regexes under various paradigms and in the various languages have extremely rich variety regarding syntax, semantics and efficiency. This isn't about the pristine theory of Prof. Chomsky, but about the actual use of regexes as programming constructs, and that's a tremendously complex subject. Friedl's book in the first edition is one of the best I've ever seen that has tackled such complexity and made it accessible and useful for the everyday business of programming.
The article indicates that the practical use of regexes, far from stagnating since Chomsky's time, continues to evolve and grow. That's only "contentless" if you're stuck in the ivory tower and don't intend to leave.
Anyone know if Mitnick was ever questioned or tried for his hacking in Las Vegas? If he has stated under oath that he didn't do any of that stuff, he might be risking a perjury charge -- unless the statute of limitations has run out on that as well.
BTW, this testimony is a real-world example of what "white-hat" hacking is supposed to be all about -- exposing security weaknesses that might be exploited by others. Of course, Mitnick might have had his black hat on back in the day when he was doing it.
I find it really stunning that jamie, one of the Slashdot editors, has posted such a comment. It shouldn't be stunning at all; and if jamie thinks it is, I wonder about the relationship between Slashdot's editorial staff and OSDN (the company that owns Slashdot).
Presumably, MSNBC wants to be regarded as a journalistic enterprise, and not a marketing instrument for their owners. That means that they must scrupulously and uncompromisingly see to it that the commercial interests of Microsoft and NBC do not interfere with their editorial decisions; if they find it newsworthy to publish reports critical of their owners, then they must do that, and let them suffer the consequences. Anything else would be a scandal, and a devastating blow to MSNBC's credibility.
Not to say that this doesn't happen to journalistic businesses sometimes, but when it does, it is properly viewed as corruption, and the reputation of that business deservedly suffers. A good example of this is portrayed in the film The Insider with Al Pacino and Russel Crowe. It's about CBS's attempt to quash a "60 Minutes" story exposing the tobacco industry's deliberate efforts to make cigarettes more addictive than they already are, because they feared getting sued, and because (IIRC) their parent company Westinghouse was planning a major deal with Brown & Williamson. CBS was villified for it, and deserved it. I recommend the film highly to anyone interested in freedom of speech and the duties of the press.
But jamie thinks that such a thing is really stunning. I hope that, despite that, there is a similar wall standing between Slashdot's editorial decisions and the interests of its owner. If someone submitted a story to Slashdot that's critical of OSDN, would they publish it?
... and I need a couple of clones of Britney Spears to keep around the house. If I don't get them, the war effort in Afghanistan may be endangered.
Viruses, security holes and general indifference about computer security; price-gouging licensing schemes; BSA audits; FUD about open source software; and now a breach of the privacy of Hotmail users (not to mention increasingly poor service for Hotmail). And then there's the antitrust trial, with revelations of threats and retaliation against OEM's, ISP's and software vendors; arrogant definace of the DOJ and the courts; no willingness to compomise, no insight or remorse; fabricated evidence in the courtroom; and Bill Gates on his deposition video in a seething rage, rocking back and forth in his chair, playing ignorant and obstinate, claiming not to understand simple words and not to remember crucial business decisions, only to be squarely contradicted by his own email.
When the Church of $cientology began a few years ago to confront their critics on the Internet, some of the critics began to refer to their campaign as Operation Footbullet, because the Co$ simply blundered again and again in highly public fashion. Their corruption and outright craziness became more obvious than ever before to anyone who cared to look.
Has the Micro$oft Corporation been conducting its own Operation Footbullet? Up until about two or three years ago, much of this was ignored by the media and there was almost no awareness of their excesses in the general public. And of course many people still don't pay much attention to the software industry. But anyone who pays the least bit of attention is faced with a constant stream of reports about ruthlessness and frankly criminal behavior, a profound lack of respect for consumers and business partners, and a general stench of unethical behavior that can only be overpowered by Enron's awful stink. I suppose Enron is ahead of M$ on the scales of immorality, but nevertheless, M$ is risking going down in history as one of the greediest and most ruthless plutocrats since the the robber barons of the railroad and Standard Oil days -- and those are the ones who've held the record for over a hundred years!
Of course, some people will respond that I'm exaggerating. I'll probably even get modded as Flamebait or Troll. And indeed, it really is hard to state the case against Micro$oft without sounding like a zealot, because the accusations are simply so hair-raising, it's hard for the uninitiated to believe that they're all true (this is, in fact, what I used to think about the Church of $cientology). Judge Jackson should not have shot his mouth off the way he did, but who could blame the man, he probably just couldn't help himself. The awful fact is that M$ is one of the most appalling corporate gangsters in all of history.
... of the world.
All right, Mr. Submitter, I'll answer your question: I haven't the foggiest idea. I've learned a little here or there about microorganisms and their possible existence outside of the Earth during my lifetime, and I regard myself as a relatively intelligent person, and tend to have strong opinions about most anything, including stuff I don't know much about. But the awful truth is that I'm not the least bit qualified to speculate on the likelihood of extraterrestrial infections on Earth. That's not an informative answer, I admit, but it's honest, and I daresay a great deal more honest than nearly all of the responses you've received so far.
To be sure, there have been a few replies so far that seem to be thoughtful and well-informed, and perhaps they come from people who really are qualified to answer the question; but like I said, I'm not really qualified to make that evaluation. Almost all of the rest, it seems to me, are comments from people who may be relatively intelligent, may have read a thing or two about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and have all kinds of strong opinions about anything, and now they are speculating with wild abandon. Which is fun, but they will give you almost no reliable answers to your question, and may lead you completely astray.
You probably wouldn't be having this problem if you had posted this question in a forum about "News for Molecular Biologists, Stuff That Matters to Astrophysicists". Why did you expect you expect to get any useful answers here?
... I would be raising as much hell with its management and board as I possibly could. I'd demand an emergency shareholders meeting, to be held immediately, and I'd bring rotten eggs and tomatoes to greet the management. I'd be lobbying the other shareholders to organize a class action suit against the management for violation of their fiduciary obligations. And I'd be looking for ways to get the hell out of the investment, before the company goes bankrupt and the stock price drops to zero.
The management of Divine is killing the company, because when you alienate your best talent, you're cutting your own throat. There is no surer way to demolish a company's long-term ability to compete and survive. I've seen it happen several times. The attempt for short-term savings and profitability will cause permanent and irreparable damage in the long run. This is not the way to solve the problem.
mar1no, or whatever your name is, and you too Mr. Moderator, the two of you are so fundamentally unable to distinguish right from wrong that I wonder if you might be capable of heinous crimes yourself. I'm not using a figure of speech here.
I have certainly never refrained from criticizing the US for the numerous stupidities it has indulged in over the years, and God knows we have an idiot for a president now. But whether I like the guy or not, what he did as an immediate response to the 9/11 attack was exactly what had to be done.
What gives the US the right to respond to mass murder with force, you ask? You tell me, what gives law enforcement the right to use force in the apprehension of a murderer who is resisting arrest? Do you believe that murderers should go free?
I'm a strong believer in peaceful resolution of conflicts, but the awful fact is that human history occasionally produces people who simply go on murdering until somebody forcibly stops them. The existence of Hitler and bin Laden and the Nazis and Al Qaida are the awful proof of this fact. Do you think that no attempt should have been made to capture the members of Al Qaida after September 11? Tell me, what would you have done? What would you have done in the real world that we live in, with all of fanatics and fascists and mass murderers who are not interested in peace at all?
And for the love of God, where do you get this moral equivalence crap? The terrorists murdered American civilians because they are Americans, and probably because the terrorists assumed that they are all Christians. Bin Laden put it in precisely those terms. But the US has used deadly force in an attempt to catch mass murderers who are resisting with deadly force; the US has not sought not to kill anyone merely because he or she is Arab or Moslem.
The Al Qaida terrorists used airplanes full of civilians as missiles, to murder even more civilians. Tell me, when has the US put hundreds of civilians on board the missiles it has used in warfare? When has the US deliberately targeted civilians at all? Some people around the world apparently believe that this happened, but I don't where on Earth they get these ideas. Even if you don't believe that there ethical motives for the US military to try to avoid civilian deaths (and I believe they do have such motives), consider the fact that the US has nothing to gain and everything to lose when innocent bystanders die. Public revulsion at civilian casualties is probably the only thing that could make the Americans lose the war; that's what happened at Vietnam. If they want to succeed in their goals against Al Qaida, they simply have to limit civilian deaths as much as they can.
Another question: Do you believe that the United States should have joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor? After reading your post, I can't rule out that you might answer no to that question, in which case you are, to put it bluntly, so stupid that I'm wasting my time. But if you are reasonable enough to agree with most people's take on history, than consider this:
Can you enunciate a moral principle according to which the US should have joined war after Pearl Harbor, but should not have after 9/11?
As a matter of fact, there were two things that could have happened after September 11 that would have made all military action unnecessary:
Both of these were never the least bit likely, given that members of both Al Qaida and the Taliban happen to be murderous fascists. Nevertheless, this is what Al Qaida and the Taliban were morally obliged to do, just as a murderer is obliged to surrender himself to law enforcement. Of course they didn't, and only then was the US in a situation where the use of force was necessary. And for this reason, it is Al Qaida and the Taliban who are responsible for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. By attempting to get away with mass murder, they are the ones who have placed ordinary Afghans in grave danger.
mar1no, I live over here in Europe, and I hear idiot blather like yours all the time. Are you a European, by any chance? I think people like you are arrogant and astonishly naive, living in a dream world and completely out of touch with reality. I think you are a moral midget, and above all quite simply dumb beyond my imagination. There's hardly enough I could say to express my contempt for you. You can't be trusted to come up with any serious solutions for the real problems that exist in the dangerous world we live in. And it's too bad, because the rest of the world could give GWB an earful for his mishandling of the Middle East and his stupid ideas about, God help us, the "axis of evil". But no one will listen to you, because you deserve no respect.
There seems to be a strong element of national pride that goes into ideas about who invented the computer, and where. It's a bit like Cold War-era disagreement between the US and the USSR about who invented airplanes.
I grew up in the US, where everybody swears up and down that the ENIAC was the first computer.
I've lived for a long time in Germany, where everybody swears up and down that computers were invented by Konrad Zuse.
And I've met Brits who swear up and down that the first computers were built in Manchester (maybe one of you wants to fill in the story here, eh mates?).
The common element in all this is that most people have only ever heard the heroic story about their own nation; and when confronted with one of the other legends, they conclude that the other guys are jingoistic, Orwellian distorters of history, and completely out of their minds.
I knew her vaguely when I was CS undergraduate at Duke in the 80's (her name was Melinda French then). I remember her as fairly nice, moderately pretty and relatively bland; but no, she's definitely not a hot broad. Not even close. Obviously, she can afford nicer clothes and a better hairdresser now, but there's only so much you can do, you know?
I don't agree with you, because historically, the public has indeed taken interest when they can see evidence of government breaking down completely. Years ago, it was hard to get people worked up about the high cost of military procurement, although a lot of people knew about the mind-boggling waste of taxpayer money. Then the stories came out about the $500 toilet seats, and people took notice. This patent could become the USPTO's toilet seat.
Look, our country is in a recession. The rich are getting tax breaks. More people are living in poverty. Social security, which many in our generation believe will form the foundation of our post-retirement earnings, is in jeopardy of falling apart. There is a war against terrorism and a parallel war against human rights. When you stack the fact that out of the thousands of patents that the USPTO gives out a year, a few are silly and challengable against the real problems plaguing our country right now, I don't think we're talking an election year issue.
The preposterous situation surrounding IP these days is hindering the growth of the software industry and contributing to the recession. It really does make a difference to the average citizen, but it's difficult to explain why. (I get the impression from your post that you don't really understand that either.) It's all a matter of finding a way to communicate the message.
Well maybe, but some people do respond to him well. And I did mention Bruce Perens first. %^)
Can somebody put up a mirror? Or would that violate some kind of IP laws? You never know these days.
The USPTO has become such an outrage that it needs to become in issue in this year's elections. That can only happen if media attention can be drawn to absurd patents, and this is just the kind of thing to do it. Everyone can understand how preposterous this is; and then, if we're lucky, the TV news will get someone like Bruce Perens or ESR as a talking head for background, and that person can go on to say, "You know the patent office does this all the time, let me give you some more examples, and let me explain the damage that it does to our economy." It's our best chance.
If we're unlucky, they'll put on an M$ spokesmen, who will use the TV sound bite to blast the GPL as an evil, anti-capitalist plot.