Under the "The Hague"-treaty, I could hypothetically be sued by E-data for downloading either:
While being on US territory
From a US-based server
of which the verdict could be enforced by the Belgian courts (in my personal case).
Same goes for providing downloads to US-based netizens.
When I'm downloading something from a European/Australian/Asian/... server, E-data can't do anything at all.
I acknowledge that the treaty can be abused in various ways, but I'm afraid that's the result of the originating country's poor jurisprudence(?).
I always have to smile when I hear US citizens speak of "frivolous" lawsuits, when most people here in Europe (and probably in a lot of other places too) consider the USA the place where people can and will sue for about anything, not seldomly demanding absurd sums of money in damages. (no disrespect to those who do).
The hague is only a small part of a much bigger problem.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
... just the US-based ones. USPTO doesn't mean diddly squat over here in Europe;-)
Seriously - I don't consider my PC a "point of sale location", so the usual transactions over the internet are indeed as the lower court stated waaaay out of the scope of this patent.
But it seems to me that a CD-shack downloading tracks to burn them for their customers would have to cough up the money. Same goes for "on-line digital cinema", where HDTV is streamed from the moviestudios to the local cinemas.
Those two example applications fit much better in the scope of "reproducing information at a point-of-sale location", they would have a problem countering this (if it weren't for the infinite amount of lawyers and the infinite amount of time of the MPAA;-)...
You can't blame 'm for trying, after seeing the other patents that USPTO granted (and that were enforced in US courts).
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
If we're talking about Belgium, here are some facts:
Proton, the electronic wallet, is implemented on every bank card you get. There are more bank cards deployed here than our population count. I personally have three bank cards, and therefore three electronic wallets, of which I use only one. Hence the skewed numbers.
The Belgian Bankers Assocation has statistics on all electronic transactions (mind you: in Dutch), that clearly show that the electronic wallet is far more popular than credit cards. Proton accounts for 51 mio transactions in 2000, credit cards only 34 mio. While these numbers may not be that big, remember that bancontact debitcards have been in use in Belgium since 1978 and are extremely well-known and way more popular than both the electronic wallet and credit cards.
Belgium is a little country, but electronic banking is one of the things we've historically been first at.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Electronic wallets may not be too popular in the states - here in Belgium and the Netherlands electronic wallets do quite well (cfr. Proton & Chipknip). And we're not quite alone here in good old Europe;-)
Furthermore, magstripe-based bank cards are being replaced with smartcards, because they're less susceptible to failing (i.e. due to magnetic lock in your handbag,...), and they're way harder to copy than their magstripe counterparts.
Personally, I find the credit card number scheme quite ludicrous (look ma, no code!).
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
You don't pump the water 3700 ft high in one go: you just need to put a reservoir capable of holding enough water for the habitants of that floor plus some extra to feed the reservoirs on the higher levels. Since there are 12 levels, you'd need 12 reservoirs, each about 300 ft to pump it higher up. That's not too difficult.
If there are duplex connections between the tanks, a fire emergency on the lower levels would benefit of the water stored in all above levels. Taifun-sprinkler system on the way in:-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Ever wondered why people are still using 9GB 10.000 RPM disks in arrays?
The problem with using larger drives in arrays, is that the performance will drop noticeably for the same size.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Re:Sadly, OpenMail was much competition for Exchan
on
HP Ending OpenMail
·
· Score: 2
Lotus Notes/Domino R5 is all about open standards (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, HTTP, LDAP) and can be a quite good/stable solution. It does need a competent admin-force, as does anything else.
Server runs on OS/390, OS/400, AIX, SunOS, HPUX, Linux and NT. Clients are Wintel/MacOS only, though.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Heymans, the spokesperson for the IFPI (aka: RIAA) has publicly declared war on the individual napster/MP3 user. IFPI has gathered data on the napster users by using a search robot, and has warned users to stay away. People that continued using napster were blacklisted, and Heymans stated that the names on this blacklist have been handed to the authorities. He also told the press that these people could expect a visit by the police shortly.
Marc Verwilghen, minister of justice responded to this that:
People don't get raided because IFPI wants it to, they get raided when a judge gives an order.
Napster/MP3 has "lowest priority" in our courts.
The search robot IFPI used to track down the napster users could possibly be illegal due to our privacy laws. This may be investigated further (and will no doubt be used by the defense attorney in case anyone should be prosecuted).
To put it bluntly, the minister of justice told IFPI that they're not the law.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
You guys could have least waited a couple of hours to make sure some clearthinking Belgians were drinking their morning coffee whilst reading slashdot... Anyhow:
Some houses of people, operating an illegal MP3 site were raided - no arrests as of yet.
IFPI (the Belgian RIAA) has been busy the last couple of months collecting data on Belgian Napster Users. They've send out a warning to everone who was identified to scare them away from Napster. If these "warned" users appeared multiple times on their lists later on, they were added to their blacklist - which IFPI gave to the authorities. IFPI has stated multiple times that they are declaring war on the individual napster user.
Coincidental, the people who were raided, had also napster installed. IFPI added them directly to their blacklist.
Yesterday, the justice minister in Belgium - Marc Verwhilgen - sent out a press release that litigating napster users has absolutely the lowest priority in our courts. This is basically the same as: "This napster-thing is really just bollocks, we have better things to do". In reality being "low priority" in the Belgian courts means that there won't be a trial for an individual napster user unless hell freezes over.
This means that individual users on the IFPI-blacklist won't be prosecuted by the Belgian authorities for using napster. If you were using napster to burn thousands of illegal CDs and sell them, you've got a whole different situation. In that case you will be prosecuted for the selling of illegal copyrighted material - not for using napster.
Not so dumb here in little ol' Belgium, eh?;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
"
They take the bullet for all the other distros and people like you show no respect for them."
I have a lot of respect for the things that Red Hat pulled off on the desktop market, and the work they are doing to pave the road for linux into the corporate world. But that doesn't make their 7.0 release any better.
My point is that I expect any official slackware release to be of the same quality: I prefer stability over features for my production machines. No matter if it's a.0, a.2 or a.whatever.
There are lots of people who have other wishes, and for which Red Hat is probably a better solution, but I'm not one of them. "Release early, release often" is a good credo - that's why the 'current'-branches exist.
Anyhow - I don't dislike RedHat, but I do think that their 7.0 release shouldn't have passed QA.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
I have a couple of alphas here, waiting to be installed with the best distribution ever;-)
Seriously: kudos to the slackware team for their efforts on the sparc and the alpha platforms. I've been playing around with Buildslack - but so far I'm too faint of heart to actually get it all up and running on my machines.
I was wondering which would be easiest: replacing the debian SysV-style init with a BSD-style init, or trying to build a homegrown slack/alpha distro. alpha-current will be on my test machine before the end of the day:-)
I do hope that Patrick and his team can keep slackware clear of the "release fever", so that we can trust their next/first release to be as stable as the slack reputation promises. If necessary, we'll just jump from 7.2 to 9.0;-) It should be better than this anyhow;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Why licencing that is restricted to a single machine? Wouldn't it be a lot more fair if the licence is granted to a person, who uses it on whatever machine he/she wants to?
I'd like to suggest a new licencing scheme to Microsoft (now grok this, Steve;-):
Personal Licence
Everybody who has WinXXXX for personal (i.e.: non-professional) use gets a licence. Keep the price very low (e.g.: less than a quarter of the current fee). The personal licence allows:
The installation of the software on any machine.
The installation/use of one single personal "profile" on any machine with the software installed.
If you want to give someone else access to the computer, get them an additional licence - then they can register their personal profile on the PC. If the user has broadband internet access, you could give an extra service with implementing "roaming profiles" over the internet. Wherever what WinPC you logon to, you always have your personal desktop right there. If the licence fees are reasonably cheap you can get licences for the whole family for a price that is similar to the current price for an old-school licence. You could try to pull this of on subscription base.
Perhaps require a valid licence key (can be checked on-line) to install other apps (ie: office).
Business Licence
For Business use, it makes a lot more sense to get licences for the machines you are using, because they are more likely to stay than the staff using them;-)
A licence allows installation of software on one single PC.
Work out site licencing deals.
B2B is where the money is, so go get them, Mr. Gates;-)
Educational Licence
Plain and simple: give schools/colleges/universities free licences for educational purposes. You don't want the next generation to grow in a bed of Free Software, not learning how to develop on Windows Whatever, just because that damn site licence was too expensive, and nobody could tell the difference when KDE was installed anyhow. You need kids to be assimi^H^H^H^H^H^H educated in your system, to make sure that they'll support (and pay for) it later on in their lives. Think long-term, think C# in K-12, think William H. Gates Junior...
Anyhow, I think that software piracy and high licence fees are heavily related - something that can be changed if there's a good system that allows people to licence the software they use without having to pay an arm and a leg. If there's one company that can pull such a revolution off, it must be Microsoft...
I mean, you are innovators, right?
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Co-lo is in most cases more expensive, and not worth the trouble except if you have very specific needs.
If you co-lo your machine you:
have to buy the machine
are responsible for the hardware maintenance, or an SLA is needed with the hosting company (mucho $$$)
Choice is quite limited - basically it needs to be nearby.
In my case (I live in Belgium, Europe), co-lo and hosting are still more expensive than in the US. I don't want to ship a machine to the other side of the planet, and hope that it gets installed properly. I want the hosting shop to be responsable for the HW, so that they can replace that fried NIC, without me coördinating everything.
Co-lo is an option, but it's not always the perfect answer.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
"
keep my eyes from becoming fried globes from staring at code for more than 8-13 hours straight"
Don't stare at your code for 8-13 hours straight. It's not only very tiring for your eyes, it's also very bad for your concentration, and hence for the quality of your coding.
Even if you work on a cubicle planet, there are always options enough to take little breaks. Go for a little walk, have short meetings with co-developers on difficulties/problems, empty your nerf gun collection on the new intern... Get away from that screen now and then.
It'll improve your mood, your eyes and your code all at once.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Err... As far as I know, it is not possible to copy laserdiscs 'bit by bit', since a laserdisc is analogue - you'll have no other choice than to use a good video capture card, preferrably in combination with a slew of SCSI disks in RAID 0:-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
This is exactly the same principle as WDM and DWDM - wave division multiplexing: you're basically blend light of different wavelengths at one end of the fiber, and filter them on the other side.
It's being used already, but only using Red, Green, Blue, would be "not too dense";-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
... who is smiling silently when seeing the 64 bit Intel CPU's being hyped as the great step forward in the future?
I'm surely not the only one with a nice 64bit CPU in my current computer (mind you: not an Intel one:) Alpha, G3/4,... we've already entered the 64bit scene a loooong time ago.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
You obviously never heard of systems like Lotus Domino - you know - that thingie that is currently still number one in the groupware install base, which has a good security model (ever heard of Lotus Notes viruses?), and which can run on _real_ servers (S/390 if necessary).
I agree that it probably won't help to create something by throwing a number of different elements together, and hoping that it will work OK - but stating that there is no software that has the functionality of Outlook/Exchange is complete and utter nonsense.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
I haven't seen it mentioned in the replies, but Lotus Domino/Notes seems to satisfy most:
Multiple clients: Notes, POP3, IMAP, Web Access - out of the box.
Domino R5 complies to internet standards: SMTP for mail, LDAP for address books.
Replication for mobile users is really good.
Special address book format can squeeze a lot of users in minimal space. One of their favourite demos is importing the entire US phone book in the address book - 100MB disk space.
Server runs on a multitude of platforms: WinNT, Linux, Sun/Solaris, AS400/OS400 (very good scaleability here - if you have AS400 admins in house), AIX, HPUX - it even runs native on S/390 mainframes.
The Lotus Domino security model is imho one of the best out there: authentication is PKI based, Lotusccript needs to be signed before it can be executed. You DO need competent admins to do the install right (as you would with every setup).
Only thing which isn't too good is that the notes clients are currently only for Wintel/MacOS - but in most corporate environments that really isn't a problem. Besides: the die-hard linux/*BSD/[whatever] fanatics can always access Domino using their favorite mail program/web browser.
And it's ofcourse way more than just mail and calendaring:-)
disclaimer: I do Notes development and Administration
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Slashdot Mirror
While being on US territory
From a US-based server
of which the verdict could be enforced by the Belgian courts (in my personal case).
Same goes for providing downloads to US-based netizens.
When I'm downloading something from a European/Australian/Asian/... server, E-data can't do anything at all.
I acknowledge that the treaty can be abused in various ways, but I'm afraid that's the result of the originating country's poor jurisprudence(?).
I always have to smile when I hear US citizens speak of "frivolous" lawsuits, when most people here in Europe (and probably in a lot of other places too) consider the USA the place where people can and will sue for about anything, not seldomly demanding absurd sums of money in damages. (no disrespect to those who do).
The hague is only a small part of a much bigger problem.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Seriously - I don't consider my PC a "point of sale location", so the usual transactions over the internet are indeed as the lower court stated waaaay out of the scope of this patent.
But it seems to me that a CD-shack downloading tracks to burn them for their customers would have to cough up the money. Same goes for "on-line digital cinema", where HDTV is streamed from the moviestudios to the local cinemas. Those two example applications fit much better in the scope of "reproducing information at a point-of-sale location", they would have a problem countering this (if it weren't for the infinite amount of lawyers and the infinite amount of time of the MPAA ;-)...
You can't blame 'm for trying, after seeing the other patents that USPTO granted (and that were enforced in US courts).
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Proton, the electronic wallet, is implemented on every bank card you get. There are more bank cards deployed here than our population count. I personally have three bank cards, and therefore three electronic wallets, of which I use only one. Hence the skewed numbers.
The Belgian Bankers Assocation has statistics on all electronic transactions (mind you: in Dutch), that clearly show that the electronic wallet is far more popular than credit cards. Proton accounts for 51 mio transactions in 2000, credit cards only 34 mio. While these numbers may not be that big, remember that bancontact debitcards have been in use in Belgium since 1978 and are extremely well-known and way more popular than both the electronic wallet and credit cards.
Belgium is a little country, but electronic banking is one of the things we've historically been first at.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Furthermore, magstripe-based bank cards are being replaced with smartcards, because they're less susceptible to failing (i.e. due to magnetic lock in your handbag, ...), and they're way harder to copy than their magstripe counterparts.
Personally, I find the credit card number scheme quite ludicrous (look ma, no code!).
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
If there are duplex connections between the tanks, a fire emergency on the lower levels would benefit of the water stored in all above levels. Taifun-sprinkler system on the way in :-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
The problem with using larger drives in arrays, is that the performance will drop noticeably for the same size.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Lotus Notes/Domino R5 is all about open standards (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, HTTP, LDAP) and can be a quite good/stable solution. It does need a competent admin-force, as does anything else.
Server runs on OS/390, OS/400, AIX, SunOS, HPUX, Linux and NT. Clients are Wintel/MacOS only, though.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Heymans, the spokesperson for the IFPI (aka: RIAA) has publicly declared war on the individual napster/MP3 user. IFPI has gathered data on the napster users by using a search robot, and has warned users to stay away. People that continued using napster were blacklisted, and Heymans stated that the names on this blacklist have been handed to the authorities. He also told the press that these people could expect a visit by the police shortly.
Marc Verwilghen, minister of justice responded to this that:
People don't get raided because IFPI wants it to, they get raided when a judge gives an order.
Napster/MP3 has "lowest priority" in our courts.
The search robot IFPI used to track down the napster users could possibly be illegal due to our privacy laws. This may be investigated further (and will no doubt be used by the defense attorney in case anyone should be prosecuted).
To put it bluntly, the minister of justice told IFPI that they're not the law.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Some houses of people, operating an illegal MP3 site were raided - no arrests as of yet.
IFPI (the Belgian RIAA) has been busy the last couple of months collecting data on Belgian Napster Users. They've send out a warning to everone who was identified to scare them away from Napster. If these "warned" users appeared multiple times on their lists later on, they were added to their blacklist - which IFPI gave to the authorities. IFPI has stated multiple times that they are declaring war on the individual napster user.
Coincidental, the people who were raided, had also napster installed. IFPI added them directly to their blacklist.
Yesterday, the justice minister in Belgium - Marc Verwhilgen - sent out a press release that litigating napster users has absolutely the lowest priority in our courts. This is basically the same as: "This napster-thing is really just bollocks, we have better things to do". In reality being "low priority" in the Belgian courts means that there won't be a trial for an individual napster user unless hell freezes over.
This means that individual users on the IFPI-blacklist won't be prosecuted by the Belgian authorities for using napster. If you were using napster to burn thousands of illegal CDs and sell them, you've got a whole different situation. In that case you will be prosecuted for the selling of illegal copyrighted material - not for using napster.
Not so dumb here in little ol' Belgium, eh? ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
My point is that I expect any official slackware release to be of the same quality: I prefer stability over features for my production machines. No matter if it's a .0, a .2 or a .whatever.
There are lots of people who have other wishes, and for which Red Hat is probably a better solution, but I'm not one of them. "Release early, release often" is a good credo - that's why the 'current'-branches exist.
Anyhow - I don't dislike RedHat, but I do think that their 7.0 release shouldn't have passed QA.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Seriously: kudos to the slackware team for their efforts on the sparc and the alpha platforms. I've been playing around with Buildslack - but so far I'm too faint of heart to actually get it all up and running on my machines.
I was wondering which would be easiest: replacing the debian SysV-style init with a BSD-style init, or trying to build a homegrown slack/alpha distro. alpha-current will be on my test machine before the end of the day :-)
I do hope that Patrick and his team can keep slackware clear of the "release fever", so that we can trust their next/first release to be as stable as the slack reputation promises. If necessary, we'll just jump from 7.2 to 9.0 ;-) ;-)
It should be better than this anyhow
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
I'd like to suggest a new licencing scheme to Microsoft (now grok this, Steve ;-):
Personal Licence
Everybody who has WinXXXX for personal (i.e.: non-professional) use gets a licence. Keep the price very low (e.g.: less than a quarter of the current fee).
The personal licence allows:
The installation of the software on any machine.
The installation/use of one single personal "profile" on any machine with the software installed.
If you want to give someone else access to the computer, get them an additional licence - then they can register their personal profile on the PC. If the user has broadband internet access, you could give an extra service with implementing "roaming profiles" over the internet. Wherever what WinPC you logon to, you always have your personal desktop right there.
If the licence fees are reasonably cheap you can get licences for the whole family for a price that is similar to the current price for an old-school licence. You could try to pull this of on subscription base.
Perhaps require a valid licence key (can be checked on-line) to install other apps (ie: office).
Business Licence ;-)
For Business use, it makes a lot more sense to get licences for the machines you are using, because they are more likely to stay than the staff using them
A licence allows installation of software on one single PC.
Work out site licencing deals.
B2B is where the money is, so go get them, Mr. Gates ;-)
Educational Licence
Plain and simple: give schools/colleges/universities free licences for educational purposes. You don't want the next generation to grow in a bed of Free Software, not learning how to develop on Windows Whatever, just because that damn site licence was too expensive, and nobody could tell the difference when KDE was installed anyhow. You need kids to be assimi^H^H^H^H^H^H educated in your system, to make sure that they'll support (and pay for) it later on in their lives. Think long-term, think C# in K-12, think William H. Gates Junior...
Anyhow, I think that software piracy and high licence fees are heavily related - something that can be changed if there's a good system that allows people to licence the software they use without having to pay an arm and a leg. If there's one company that can pull such a revolution off, it must be Microsoft...
I mean, you are innovators, right?
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
"With one exception, every prime number is odd"
"2 is an even prime number"
I'm wondering what that exception could be...
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Get them here.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
If you co-lo your machine you:
have to buy the machine
are responsible for the hardware maintenance, or an SLA is needed with the hosting company (mucho $$$)
Choice is quite limited - basically it needs to be nearby.
In my case (I live in Belgium, Europe), co-lo and hosting are still more expensive than in the US. I don't want to ship a machine to the other side of the planet, and hope that it gets installed properly. I want the hosting shop to be responsable for the HW, so that they can replace that fried NIC, without me coördinating everything.
Co-lo is an option, but it's not always the perfect answer.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Even if you work on a cubicle planet, there are always options enough to take little breaks. Go for a little walk, have short meetings with co-developers on difficulties/problems, empty your nerf gun collection on the new intern... Get away from that screen now and then.
It'll improve your mood, your eyes and your code all at once.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
It's being used already, but only using Red, Green, Blue, would be "not too dense" ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
The installer of specific Linux distributions fails. The kernel really doesn't mind.
Linux won't install on those systems - not "won't run" as stated in the title.
Linux != Red Hat
Package Management != RPM
Slackware runs just fine ;-)
'nuff said
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
I'm surely not the only one with a nice 64bit CPU in my current computer (mind you: not an Intel one :) Alpha, G3/4,... we've already entered the 64bit scene a loooong time ago.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
I agree that it probably won't help to create something by throwing a number of different elements together, and hoping that it will work OK - but stating that there is no software that has the functionality of Outlook/Exchange is complete and utter nonsense.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Multiple clients: Notes, POP3, IMAP, Web Access - out of the box.
Domino R5 complies to internet standards: SMTP for mail, LDAP for address books.
Replication for mobile users is really good.
Special address book format can squeeze a lot of users in minimal space. One of their favourite demos is importing the entire US phone book in the address book - 100MB disk space.
Server runs on a multitude of platforms: WinNT, Linux, Sun/Solaris, AS400/OS400 (very good scaleability here - if you have AS400 admins in house), AIX, HPUX - it even runs native on S/390 mainframes.
The Lotus Domino security model is imho one of the best out there: authentication is PKI based, Lotusccript needs to be signed before it can be executed. You DO need competent admins to do the install right (as you would with every setup).
Only thing which isn't too good is that the notes clients are currently only for Wintel/MacOS - but in most corporate environments that really isn't a problem. Besides: the die-hard linux/*BSD/[whatever] fanatics can always access Domino using their favorite mail program/web browser. :-)
And it's ofcourse way more than just mail and calendaring
disclaimer: I do Notes development and Administration
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.