Why? Both of them "just work", and provide a combination of performance and reliability that many others can't, all GPL-vs-proprietary religious fanaticism notwithstanding.
And I suppose you don't mind what this German companies did during the '30s and '40s?
My mother, when she was a 11 to 14 years old girl, was working as a slave in VW factories (BMW and Mercedes-Benz wasn't any different), while her best friend from school was murdered in a gas chamber in Treblinka.
Guess who built those gas chambers and giant ovens? I suppose you are OK with that, because thanks to slave workers and those
death facories
built for nazis,
those companies could grow and as a result they can now make so great cars?
Just like the USA and Nigerian slaves were OK, because without the slavery USA would not be so successful, right?
I will tell you something:
The worst
things Microsoft has ever done
is nothing
compared to your German car companies.
I would rather buy million copies of Microsoft Windows
than one smallest part manufactured by one of those German
companies, or IBM for that matter, who sold machines to Hitler,
thanks to which nazis could find Jewish
ancestors of any given citizen
up to five generations in the past
and send this person to death camps,
because having Jew as a
great-great-great-grandfather
was enough to send someone to death!
Maybe you think that only Hitler was evil and every other German was good? I remind you that Hitler was chosen in a democratic election!
If you compare Microsoft to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, VW or IBM than you simply don't know what you are saying.
And please don't tell me that
there was no holocaust!
My mother who is now 72 years old
got money from Germans because she could prove to them that she was working as a slave when she was still a child. Do you know how much money has she got? 2000 DEM, which was about 1000 USD! Yes, a 1000 fucking bucks for four years working as a slave being a child without any contact with parents and sister!
And she thanks God every day that she was not murdered by nazis, like many of her friends, when they were still children!
So please, for the love of God, don't tell me that we can compare VW, Mercedes-Benz or BMW to Microsoft!
Now, keep in mind, that
The Debian Project
was officially founded in 1993.
The creation of Debian was sponsored by the
Free Software Foundation's
GNU Project,
before the
Software in the Public Interest
organization was formed.
Debian is the only GNU/Linux distribution,
which correctly use the operating system name
"GNU/Linux," while all other
GNU/Linux distributions refuse to give
any due credit to The GNU Project,
for some reason.
Now you should have some idea why
"the OSI definition typically includes most of the same freedoms that are found with Free Software."
And you should probably also have idea why
so many people get so angry
when most of the world is talking about
Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds
as the only heroes in the community
--
Eric Raymond,
who started the Open Source Movement
and OSI in 1998
(never minding
Richard Stallman who started
the Free Software Movement
and FSF in 1985),
and Linus Torvalds,
who wrote the whole operating system
in 1991
(never minding, again,
Richard Stallman, who started
The GNU Project in 1983).
See this recent farce,
as an example on what I am talking about.
The facts are, that
Linus Torvalds took an 8 years old
operating system project, which only lacked the
finished kernel, wrote a kernel and
published the whole operating system
(GNU system plus his own kernel)
as "Linux."
In my opinion, this operating system
should be called simply "GNU," however
Richard Stallman and the FSF wish to give
both projects equal credit
(for not equal work, mind you)
calling the whole
operating system
"GNU/Linux."
Still, most of the people call it just "Linux,"
refusing to mention GNU at all,
for reasons which are beyond me.
The same strange
attitude we can observe with
"Open Source Software" and
The Open Source Initiative
vs.
"Free Software" and
The Free Software Foundation.
Why is that so important? For a good example,
see the "Linux" definition from this recent Sony Press Release from December 18, 2002:
"Linux: a Unix compatible open source operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, then a graduate student at the University of Helsinki."
Now I think it should be obvious for everyone.
Keep in mind that I am talking about Sony here.
This is the misinformation, which most
of the people outside the community will
take as truth.
And when anyone will start to wonder why
this software was started in the first place,
she will go to Linus Torvalds and OSI's
explainations, because she will not even know
about the GNU and The Free Software Philosophy.
I think that the
"Open Source Linux OS"
vs.
"Free Software GNU/Linux OS"
schism is very harmful to the
community at large,
because the people outside of
the hacker subculture
have not only no idea who in fact
has done which work,
but they also have no idea why,
which is much more important.
The real reason is freedom,
but when people think that they use a
"Linux OS," which was written by Linus Torvalds
as an "open source software," which was invented
by Eric Raymond,
then they will never know that
it is all about freedom at all.
So, they are happy with proprietary
device drivers, the very same thing
which made Richard Stallman
start The GNU Project in the first place.
This post will probably get moderated down,
as most of Slashdot users
unfortunately represent
the let's-never-mention-GNU attitude
of the young Internet community today.
Of course, at the same time,
some other post will get
moderated up as +5 Funny,
because it says
GNU/this GNU/that
-- yes, very funny indeed,
especially after repeating this
idiotic joke million times a week,
not even stopping to think why
it is important to talk about freedom,
as the main motivation behind The GNU Project
and the Free Software Movement at large...
Sad. Very sad.
Re:This is really great news
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 1
The problem here, is that only the rich can afford an easy to use web publishing package like FrontPage running on Windoes XP/2000. Everyone else is forced to use a free but hard to use knock-off like Linux to make their voices heard.
Some people say that if you are not intelligent enough to use GNU Emacs text editor,
then you should not publish anything anyway.
I do not share this view, I think that
everyone should have a right to free speech.
However you are right that the situation today
looks like this: either you have to be
rich enough to buy Microsoft tools
($300 for operating system and $560 for Microsoft Office)
or you have to be intelligent enough to
learn how to write XHTML, CSS, Perl, SQL, sh
and Apache configuarion files,
as well as to learn how to use Emacs.
Either way, this is elitism.
In both cases, not everyone has the same
possibilities to exercise her
constitutional right to be heard,
which is, in my opinion, not a fair situation
at all.
I guess that this isn't as much of an issue as say, 100,000 year old microbes, but still...
I don't know if this was meant to be a joke
(please excuse my lack of sense of humor then)
but the age of those organisms is meaningless.
I do not care if any given life form is
one year old or million years old,
as long as it is safe for humans.
Remember that there are species, which have
not been evolving for many years.
There is no difference between such an organism
today, and the same organism years ago,
because it has not changed.
The age is not an issue, the behavior is.
does anybody else wory about that this 3000 year old stable ecological system could now have been "contaminated" by alien DNA?
I certainly worry more about our own, Earth DNA.
There is still no evidence of extraterrestrial life existence, which may just mean that no alien life form
has reached our planet yet.
That is why I do not worry about it.
But I do worry about our domestic life forms,
which -- unlike alien life forms --
are known to be sometimes lethal to other
life forms of Earth.
Or that it at least had to be polluted?
What do you mean by "polluted"?
When all that's noticed is the downtime...
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 1
You've succeeded in delivering 5 9's, your server farm is a well oiled machine, the helpdesk lines lie dormant. No? Well then how do you get credit for the work you do, when all that's noticed is the downtime?
Then maybe it is high time to hire
Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
or similar company.
(Disclaimer:
I don't have anything in common with
Counterpane, other than I have read
few books and lots of papers written by
Bruce Schneier.)
I think we should start thinking about
hiring experts on Internet security
to watch out networks,
just like we hire experts for any other
kind of security.
That way our own emploees can focus on
their work, not on the new exploit or
on the new kind of lockpick and the new
burgler gang in town.
even paranoids i know allow any and all traffic out of any given subnet, but they heavily firewall incoming traffic.
Firewalling outgoing traffic can be useful in case some of the hosts on your network were compromised
(e.g. by an email worm,
which can go through even in the case every incoming connections are blocked)
and you want to lessen the harm which can be
done using this host.
For example The HoneyNet Project uses a limit of 5 outgoing connections from every compromised host, because they don't want their hosts attacking the outside world.
Of course, in the case of HoneyNet it is easy, because every outgoing connection is made by a successful intruder, however my point is that outgoing traffic can do some harm and this may be a reason people block some of it.
anyway, change your isp or get a job there so you can fix it. in any event, complain your ass off.
Here I absolutely agree.
Google contest ideas?
on
Google's new toys
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Are these new features based on
ideas from the Google contest,
which took place some time ago?
If so, what are the other ideas, which
are not yet implemented, but which may be used
in the future?
My ISP keeps my server behind a tight firewall, only allowing outgoing HTTP(S) and SMTP.
I would like to sync the system's clock using NTP.
Does anyone know of any public time servers that can do some type of NTP over HTTP, to get through the firewall?
I am sorry, but the only reasonable advice I can give you is to change your ISP if they do not open more ports.
You have only outgoing HTTP and SMTP?
What about SSH? What about FTP?
What about Telnet? What about IRC?
Are you also going to tunnel them through HTTP?
HTTP is a stateless and
sessionless protocol.
It is extremely bad idea to
tunnel anything which uses long and interactive
two-way TCP traffic (like IRC, SSH, FTP, Telnet,...) using HTTP.
Not only it is technically bad idea,
you also compromise the firewall security if you use covert channels to hide all the forbidden traffic. The firewall rules to not allow
insecure (in the opinion of firewall management team) protocols traffic are ruined when their
users want to consciously
compromise the security.
We all know that using SSH or NTP is not insecure in itself, but when everyone tunnels everything bastardizing HTTP protocol, no one will ever notice when some day there is Back Orifice traffic hidden there between NTP, SSH, Telnet, FTP, IRC, et cetera.
So my advice is: talk to your ISP.
Tell them why you need NTP for security reasons (to have your logs useful).
Tell them what do you want them to change.
It is you,
who are paying them,
for the love of God, not the other way around.
Nothing will ever change unless people start
saying what do they want to be changed.
Your "answer" ignores one important fact - that neither the MPEG4 codec, nor the MPEG4 file format are proprietary.
Actually, I was talking more about the Real Video formats (these is the only area I have any
real informations about).
As for Quick Time, I have not been
following their development since
the problems I had with their formats
and codecs (e.g. Sorenson).
But if that Quick Time format/codecs this story is about is truely free and open
(by which I mean that it is patent-free,
the full specification is available to anyone
without NDAs and anyone can make
its free software implementation), then
I had to be mistaken about Quick Time
and I will have to reeducate myself.
Thank you for pointing it out,
I am glad that they have chosen the
free (as in freedom) way of
designing multimedia codecs and file formats.
I was also almost sure that the MPEG4
was not free format
(i.e. not as free as Ogg formats),
I had to be wrong, please excuse my
ignorance then.
The only reason they keep trying to add such technology to phones is so they can continue to rip you off with their charges.
No, you are being mistaken.
Those charges are important indeed,
however they are not the key issue.
Of course, as you have already stated,
movies on the cell phone are useless.
Even if there was no charges at all,
there is no reason to have such feature
other than to "show off,"
while with those charges the situation looks like this: it is the most expensive and the least convenient method for watching movies in the history of cinematography.
So why do they add such a useless functionality to they cell phones?
Of course the most obvious reason would be
to sell uselessly powerful hardware,
but that is still not the most important issue.
The real answer,
and I say it as someone who has
spoken with employees of one of the key
software companies in the market,
is to lock people with proprietary
codecs and/or file formats.
Because when everyone has only Real Video and Quick Time on her cell phone
few years from now in the future, she will
be much less likely to record her
grandchildren family movies in
Ogg Theora/Vorbis format, if she won't
be able to watch them on her cell phone.
You may say that it is not important
in which format someone stores movies of
one's children or cat, but
it is very important to make sure
it will not be convenient for people to
use free and open formats.
After all, this is what average people want,
not freedom, not liberty, not even safety,
but convenience.
And when it is inconvenient to use open formats,
and convenient to use only proprietary formats,
they will try to make fees for making movies,
or maybe even for every distributed copy.
And here are the big money.
Grandma will say "Oh, this is nothing 50 cents for every person I will send this movie to,"
but the recording industry with its
legacy business model will be safe,
as no one will be able to compete with them
as an independent movie or music maker,
without paying them money.
And this is, people, how the monopolies are
built and maintained.
Please consider this issues.
Because so far, the most popular attitude is this:
"Those, who can give up essential liberty...
Ooooh! A new shiny cell phone with
proprietary file formats! This is so cool!
Where do I sign up?!"
This is sad, but that way, nothing will ever change.
And this is what I sadly observe,
even here on Slashdot.
It is hard to copy things,
all right, the technology will save us!
Oops! It is now easier to copy things,
we need to make a copyright law.
It is now illegal to copy things, all right,
the law will save us!
Oops! It is illegal but still easy to copy things,
we need to invent copy prevention techniques.
It is now hard to copy things again,
all right, the technology will save us!
Oops! It is impossible to make
copy prevention techniques,
we need DMCA.
It is now illegal to
make things which help copy things,
all right, the law will save us!
These are great news,
for people interested in science
(I read about it some time ago),
however I am afraid it will give new arguments
to all of those
people, who believe, that the landing
on the Moon was a hoax.
These people,
as well as everyone, who believes in the,
so called, "conspiracy theories,"
are usually so ignorant
(some people say they are "stupid,"
but, as a man of science, I have to
respect even those points of view,
which I don't agree with, or which are
simply wrong, so I refuse using the
term "stupid" to insult these people--after
all, people tend to believe in many strange
theories and religions, which, in my opinion,
doesn't automatically make them "stupid"),
that they will not listen to our explanations
that this technology is very new
and that we had no such computers in 1969,
which would be even comparable with
what we have today.
This, however, can start the argument all over again. I hope NASA has already thought about
counter arguments in that discussion.
Do you think there is any chance
Microsoft could release GNU/Linux
or GNU/Hurd version of
Microsoft Bob in a form of X11 window manager?
It has very low system requirements
(80486, 8MB RAM, 32MB HD)
which makes it perfect for teaching kids
the basics of computer usage
(together with such projects like
Debian Junior,
GNU and Education,
LinuxForKids,
SEUL/edu, etc.) on low-end PC hardware.
Some time ago, I was looking for a good
window manager/desktop environment and,
while there are many good applications,
I couldn't find any graphical user interface itself,
which would be similar to Microsoft Bob.
What I need is not only something easy to learn,
but also actually fun to play with,
so the kids will want to learn the basics of
computer science.
Do you know any projects, which I could use here?
(Free software would be the best.) Thanks.
He may be a nut
(and, in fact, I'm fairly sure he is)
but he has done more than anyone else to
the Open Source Movement,
i.e. he started it.
He is to the Open Source Movement,
what Albert Einstein is to
the Special Theory of Relativity,
what Martin Luther is to
the Lutheran Church, and
what Samuel Hahnemann is to Homeopathy.
He is also to the Free Software Movement,
what Albert Einstein is to
the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica,
what Martin Luther is to Catholic Church,
and what Samuel Hahnemann is to Pharmacy.
And for that, I think he deserves our
respect.
I am sure everyone will agree with me
about that.
So, please, at the very least, show
some respect, for God's sake!
He doesn't actually say open source software, only free He doesn't actually say open source software, only free.
Amen.
I absolutely agree.
"open source" != "free software"
I wish more people have read
GNU Philosophy to know that.
Please let me suggest you all
(and by "you all" I mean
all the people who do not yet
understand the difference
between open source and free software,
not Eht of course)
reading these particularly important texts:
When, in 1998,
Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and renamed them as
the Open Source Definition,
he didn't want his new movement
being misinterpreted as the
Free Software Movement,
and especially the
strong philosophy associated with the term
"free software" since at least 1983.
Otherwise he would have used the old
"free software" term, not the new
"open source."
Please let us
have some respect to his work.
Because Microsoft Internet Explorer does not come with a MNG viewer, the vast majority of home users of the World Wide Web cannot see MNG images.
See MNG4IE,
an ActiveX control for viewing MNG in
Microsoft Internet Explorer by Jason Summers,
which installation is a simple matter of clicking the right link.
There's also
MNG Plug-in by Jason Summers.
I don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer
(I use Mozilla, which doesn't have such problems),
but I know that there are actually many different
ways of using MNG in that browser
(like using a QuickTime MNG component for example).
You can find out more informations on
MNG
and libmng
web sites.
Of course,
since the libmng license
"specifically permit[s], without fee, and encourage[s] the use of this source code as a component to supporting the MNG and JNG file format in commercial products,"
there is absolutely
no excuse why libmng shouldn't be used natively by Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Of course, a
detailed specification of the MNG format
is freely available, so anyone can
support MNG even without using libmng,
which makes it absolutely unacceptable to not support MNG in any modern web browser.
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer I would suggest you sending a feature request, or even a bug report, asking them to add native MNG support.
And is there any way to convert XCF (GIMP's format) to MNG?
convert file.xcf file.mng
Use ImageMagick,
which is, in my opinion,
the best
"robust collection of tools and libraries
(...) to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 87 major formats)."
You can also write
convert -delay 100 frame*.png anim.mng
and make a MNG animation anim.mng from individual frames frame01.png, frame02.png, etc.
That way you don't have to use multilayer file format as your input.
ImageMagick is great for
such uses.
That is terrible advice. Compare the amount of ogg players to mp3 players. Mp3 is by far the better solution in terms of getting your sounds heard by others.
This is simply not true.
Please show me any popular MP3 player,
which cannot play Ogg Vorbis today.
Even asf is better than ogg is that regard (and some codecs for it compress better than ogg.)
Really? Could you back it up with any
meaningful data, Mr. Anonymous Coward?
(If that is your real name.)
The whole hype thing about ogg is/was basically that it is a free standard.
And is it not a great advantage by itself?
Technically, it is no better. In popularity terms, it is much much worse.
Technically it is better.
You would know that if you knew both standards
internal details.
(Or maybe you do know,
but you are one of those people who just love
starting meaningless discussions on Slashdot?)
Please do not spread such a disinformation.
It is less popular than MP3,
like the JPEG used to be less popular than GIF.
But it had nothing to do with the
"lower quality of JPEG."
Debian GNU/Hurd is also less popular than
Microsoft Windows.
Do you think it is a reason
not to use it ever?
Or is it because of the quality
of any of those systems?
Or maybe some things are just popular,
because they are popular?
You know, he should use ogg to distribute, not to store. Storage is going to take gigs, and be magnitudes higher quality than anyone could ever hope ogg to be without being simliarly sized.
Of course, I was talking about the distribution.
For storage he should use MIDI for
MIDI-only music,
while FLAC would be perfect*
for anything more than MIDI
(i.e. vocal and other sound otherwise
impossible to store as MIDI).
For MIDI music, MIDI is the best format,
because it's quality-independent
(like Postscript).
*However FLAC
(and any lossless audio compression for that matter)
is only good if you need a perfect
copy, which can make sense only if
your recording and digitalization process
(sampling as well as quantization)
was perfect.
In reality it is rare, even for professional
recording studios,
to record and digitalize music
with lower noise to signal ratio than the
error which the high quality Vorbis encoding
(usually even -q8)
would introduce, never mind that it is rare
for homo sapiens to actually hear
this error, which, unlike the recording
noise, is specifically designed
to use known imperfection of human ear.
But, however stupid it may be,
this is very common for people to store
lossless compression (or even no compression at all, like.wav) of music recorded
in such a way, which has already introduced
much more noise that even
Vorbis at quality setting -q4 would cause.
Remember that even such a high quality as -q9
reduces the file size 4 times,
while I personally haven't found anyone
who could tell -q6 Vorbis
(which was about 14% of the original in size)
from the original, having the most expensive audiophile sound equipment I've ever seen.
This is actually a very interesting experiment.
Take some great quality classical music recording
and encode it with oggenc -q0, -q1..., -q10.
Then, when you have 12 files (11.ogg and the original.wav), shuffle them
(really shuffle, e.g. using a deck of cards with track numbers written on them)
and randomly burn them on a CD,
after converting them back to uncompressed PCM.
(Remember to use good encoder and decoder,
like the original Xiph.org's Ogg Vorbis software.)
If the recording is short enough,
then encode more versions,
-q0, -q0.5, -q1, -q1.5, etc. -- the more
versions, the better the test result
but more than 20 different versions can be annoying to the person you are testing.
Remember the order and give it to someone
who thinks has great ears
(and great equipment)
to sort in in increasing quality,
while being able to listen and change tracks
for as long as she wants.
Give it to every person who wants to take this test, while shuffling the tracks diffrently for everyone.
Most of people with good equipment will correctly sort everything up to -q4, but very few people will find the -q5 and even less will correctly find -q6.
I can guarantee you that
-q8, -q9, -q10 and the original will be sorted totally randomly.
But, when you don't shuffle the tracks before you burn them and show the sorted CD to someone to judge, almost everyone will tell you that they hear the quality difference between every track if they know they are sorted.
This is because they think they should hear it. It's like a placebo effect and this is why you should always make a blind test, using a shuffled tracks.
So, in other words,
"Storage is going to take gigs, and be magnitudes higher quality than anyone could ever hope ogg to be without being similarly sized" (emphasis added)
is simply not true.
Please don't spread such disinformation.
Thank you.
U.S. Patent 4,558,302 encumbers LZW compression until late June 2003. On July 4, I will celebrate not only the independence of the United States from the United Kingdom but also the independence of LZW compression from those who are not willing to license its use in free software.
It is beyond my imagination why on Earth anyone would want to use GIF, now when we have PNG.
GIF used to be the best format for some kinds of graphics in the past, but then came JPEG for natural photographic lossy compression
(yes, photographic pictures used to be
stored as GIF before JPEG) and
later came PNG for lossless compression
(giving us everything the GIF format has,
plus 32-bit RGBA with real alpha channel,
better compression, gamma correction,
file integrity checks, seven-pass
two-dimensional interlacing, et cetera).
Now GIF is not even remotely optimal in any niche.
Besides, its 8 bits per pixel limit is laughable in the year 2002.
Don't tell me that we need GIF for animated banners,
they are useless and still we have MNG for that.
(I'm talking about animated raster images, not vector graphics,
for which there is SVG, or the proprietary Flash format.)
Or maybe you need the LZW itself?
Then why won't you use zlib or libbz2?
If you think that we should use GIF to make a point against
software patents then it is
already too late.
When freely using GIF becomes legal, then
it is not civil disobedience any more.
If now we all start to use GIF,
they win. Why?
Because that would mean that
it was a good idea to patent LZW,
as now
when the patent expires, everyone finally
benefits having and being able to use
the wonderful file format which the GIF is.
The problem with that situation is that
GIF was useless long before the patent would expire, therefore giving no contribution
whatsoever to the community at large.
And remember that this is the whole
point of patent law.
Patent law is not for inventor's benefit,
it is for humanity benefit,
while the inventor's temporary monopoly
for her invention is merely a trade-off,
a compromise needed to achieve the real goal.
When the patent expiration time is to long,
humanity don't benefit at all,
and this is the real problem
with software patents, because with software
often a 5-year period is unacceptable.
A GIF-related patents expiring in 2002 is
like zeppelin patent expiring in 2250.
Great, we all can now fly zeppelins!
But who cares?
...or at least I do hope it
should be obvious
(but unfortunately it is not true for everyone,
I don't see any other comments
talking about it yet),
whichever software and operating system you
choose,
please consider using
Ogg Vorbis format to store your music.
Many people still keep using
proprietary MP3 file format,
which is unfortunate not because of its
lower quality to size ratio, which is
hard to hear for an average person,
who doesn't even usually hear any
difference between
192kbps and 256kbps
constant bitrate MP3 files,
but because of its legal issues.
While Vorbis is technically similar to JPEG
graphics format, i.e. it's a "lossy" compression,
it is legally similar to PNG, while MP3
is in that analogy similar to GIF,
using LZW compression patented by Unisys.
See the
MP3/MP3PRO Patent and Software Licensing Information
website and
search Google for
"MP3 patent" to find more informations about this issue.
Also, I hope,
and I'm sure most of the people here
will agree with me,
there will be a little "(O)"
mark, next to your copyright statement!
Good luck!
We'll be looking for your links in the
Open Music Registry!
(And please, don't post this
old stupid joke
that we should use double OAL logo,
"because (o)(o) looks better," because
it doesn't.
It looks like an immature joke made by a
15-year-old child,
while EFF's OAL should be taken
seriously if we ever want it to successfully compete with the recording industry at large.)
"It also includes a selection of essays about Open Source philosophy, and links to other programs that might be of interest."
I'm sorry, but what is exactly open source philosophy?
Open source is about technical
and economical advantages.
Free software is about philosophy.
Please do not flame me for saying the obvious.
When Eric Raymond took
Debian Free Software Guidelines and published them as
Open Source Definition in 1998 he did it exactly
because he wanted
free software without the
strong philosophy associated with the "free software" term since at least
the announcement of the GNU Project in 1983.
I think that TheOpenCD project should
not
talk about philosophy if they want to
promote the open source movement.
But if they think that the philosophy is important, then they should promote the free software movement and change their name to TheFreeCD.
Because the philosophy is exactly the difference
between free software and open source movements.
If they talk about "open source philosophy"
they are being against the main priciples
of both movements.
Those books are not very long,
but they provide enough background
to let avoid using such
unfortunate
oxymorons like
"open source philosophy."
I strongly respect both free software and open source movements and I can not stay ignorant
when people insult any of them,
while the term "open source philosophy"
insults both.
djbdns will out perform everything else and has security guarantee backed by a cash reward for security holes. djbdns has never had a security hole and never will.
You are being very naive.
Please read this comment of mine,
I don't want to repeat myself.
The point is, that
basically a
"security guarantee backed by a cash reward"
doesn't mean anything.
I'm really surprised that
people,
sometimes even educated people,
are still
trusting in such poor marketing tools
as "cracking contests."
No, it's secure because no one has ever found a flaw in tinydns. He has a *cash* reward for anyone who can prove that it is flawed. No one has taken then money, in several years of it being offered.
It's
hard to believe that people are still
trusting in software security, because no
one has won some cracking contest yet.
Gene Spafford, Sameer Parekh,
Jon Wiederspan, Jeff Weinstein,
Bruce Schneier... -- they have been
writing about it for decades.
You see them all the time: Company X offers $1,000,000 to anyone
who can break through their firewall/crack their algorithm/make a
fraudulent transaction using their protocol/do whatever. These are
cracking contests, and they're supposed to show how strong and secure the
target of the contests are. The logic goes something like this: We
offered a prize to break the target, and no one did. This means that the
target is secure.
It doesn't.
Contests are a terrible way to demonstrate security. A
product/system/protocol/algorithm that has survived a contest unbroken is
not obviously more trustworthy than one that has not been the subject of a
contest. The best products/systems/protocols/algorithms available today
have not been the subjects of any contests, and probably never will be.
Contests generally don't produce useful data. (...)
Taken at a conservative $125 an hour for a competent cryptanalyst, a $10K prize pays for two weeks of work, not enough time to even dig through the code. A $100K prize might be worth a look, but reverse-engineering the product is boring and that's still not enough time to do a thorough job. A prize of $1M starts to become interesting, but most companies can't afford to offer that. And the cryptanalyst has no guarantee of getting paid: he may not find anything, he may get beaten to the attack and lose out to someone else, or the company might not even pay. Why should a cryptanalyst donate his time (and good name) to the company's publicity campaign?
Cryptanalysis contests are generally nothing more than a publicity tool. Sponsoring a contest, even a fair one, is no guarantee that people will analyze the target. Surviving a contest is no guarantee that there are no flaws in the target. (...)
Contests, if implemented correctly, can provide useful information and reward particular areas of research. But they are not useful metrics to judge security. I can offer $10K to the first person who successfully breaks into my home and steals a book off my shelf. If no one does so before the contest ends, that doesn't mean my home is secure. Maybe no one with any burgling ability heard about my contest. Maybe they were too busy doing other things. Maybe they weren't able to break into my home, but they figured out how to forge the real-estate title to put the property in their name. Maybe they did break into my home, but took a look around and decided to come back when there was something more valuable than a $10,000 prize at stake. The contest proved nothing.
Bruce Schneier writes mostly about
cryptanalysis contests but the situation
is basically the same with
the software security cracking contests.
Let me also quote
Hacker Challenges -- Boon or Bane?
from
the February 1996 issue of Electronic CIPHER.
It's almost seven years old, but even today
many people still
seem to not understand it:
A Few Comments on "Hacker Challenges"
by Eugene H. Spafford, COAST Laboratory Director, Purdue University
I note with dismay the increasing number of "hacker challenges" used in
marketing security products. I think these are actually harmful to the
profession and practice of security, rather than helpful. I believe the
harm comes in two ways: (1) the challenges don't serve as any real test
of the products, and it denigrates security professionals by suggesting
that they should accept them as proof of security; and (2) it helps
reinforce the image that there should be some form of reward for
hacking through security measures. Neither of these are views we should
responsibly seek to promote.
Consider the nature of showing the security of a product. Does a
"challenge" meet the goal of testing, which is to increase one's
confidence in the correct functioning of the artifact? It really
doesn't, for a number of reasons:
Few such "challenges" are conducted using established testing
techniques. They are ad hoc, random tests. Thus, there is no way of
determining final coverage. For instance, if 90% of all challenge
attacks are of the same variety, what has the "test" really shown?
(Consider testing a calculator. If you perform 10,000 tests, but
9000 of them are addition with zero, have you done a thorough job of
testing?)
That no problems are found does not mean that no problems exist. It
may mean that the testers didn't expose them. Doing random,
black-box testing remotely is not likely to really test much of the
product. (Challenge testing is basically a form of black-box
testing.)
That no problems are reported does not mean that no problems exist.
The "testers" might not have recognized them. (Look at how often
software is released with bugs, even after careful scrutiny -- users
don't always recognize anomalies.)
That no problems are reported does not mean that no problems exist.
How do you know that the "testers" will report what they find? How
do you know the vendor is getting accurate data? If Jane Random
Hacker found a way to penetrate the product in a manner that vendor
monitoring didn't expose, it is possible she'd find more profitable
uses (later) for that information than informing the vendor about
it. Further, because of possible problems with the law, hackers
might not want to report success and draw attention to themselves.
Simply because the vendor does not report a successful penetration
does not mean that one did not occur -- the vendor may choose not to
report it because it would reflect poorly on its product, or not
meet the narrow criteria for a "successful" penetration, or the
vendor may not be able to detect it happened. (How can anyone
outside prove otherwise?)
Seldom do the really good experts, on either side of the fence,
participate in such exercises. Thus, anything done is usually done
by amateurs. (The "honor" of having won the challenge is not
sufficient to lure the good ones into the fray. Good consultants
command fees of several thousand $$ per day in some cases -- why
should they donate their time and names for what amounts to free
consulting and advertising?)
So, let me repeat:
it is NOT necessarily secure just
because no one has ever published a flaw in tinydns
(we can't even assume no one has found it).
There may be a cash reward for anyone
who can prove that it is flawed, but
even if no one has proven it yet,
it doesn't mean it is not flawed.
Remember that it doesn't mean that
someone has proven it's secure
--
it just means no one has proven it's insecure,
which is something totally different.
Hopefully, people will understand it some day.
Slashdot Mirror
And I suppose you don't mind what this German companies did during the '30s and '40s? My mother, when she was a 11 to 14 years old girl, was working as a slave in VW factories (BMW and Mercedes-Benz wasn't any different), while her best friend from school was murdered in a gas chamber in Treblinka. Guess who built those gas chambers and giant ovens? I suppose you are OK with that, because thanks to slave workers and those death facories built for nazis, those companies could grow and as a result they can now make so great cars? Just like the USA and Nigerian slaves were OK, because without the slavery USA would not be so successful, right?
I will tell you something: The worst things Microsoft has ever done is nothing compared to your German car companies. I would rather buy million copies of Microsoft Windows than one smallest part manufactured by one of those German companies, or IBM for that matter, who sold machines to Hitler, thanks to which nazis could find Jewish ancestors of any given citizen up to five generations in the past and send this person to death camps, because having Jew as a great-great-great-grandfather was enough to send someone to death! Maybe you think that only Hitler was evil and every other German was good? I remind you that Hitler was chosen in a democratic election! If you compare Microsoft to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, VW or IBM than you simply don't know what you are saying.
And please don't tell me that there was no holocaust! My mother who is now 72 years old got money from Germans because she could prove to them that she was working as a slave when she was still a child. Do you know how much money has she got? 2000 DEM, which was about 1000 USD! Yes, a 1000 fucking bucks for four years working as a slave being a child without any contact with parents and sister! And she thanks God every day that she was not murdered by nazis, like many of her friends, when they were still children! So please, for the love of God, don't tell me that we can compare VW, Mercedes-Benz or BMW to Microsoft!
Read the OSI's Open Source Definition or, better yet, the original Open Source Definition Version 1.0, published in 1998, when the Open Source Initiative was founded.
Then, after you read the Open Source Definition 1.0, read The Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Now, keep in mind, that The Debian Project was officially founded in 1993. The creation of Debian was sponsored by the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, before the Software in the Public Interest organization was formed. Debian is the only GNU/Linux distribution, which correctly use the operating system name "GNU/Linux," while all other GNU/Linux distributions refuse to give any due credit to The GNU Project, for some reason.
Now you should have some idea why "the OSI definition typically includes most of the same freedoms that are found with Free Software."
And you should probably also have idea why so many people get so angry when most of the world is talking about Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds as the only heroes in the community -- Eric Raymond, who started the Open Source Movement and OSI in 1998 (never minding Richard Stallman who started the Free Software Movement and FSF in 1985), and Linus Torvalds, who wrote the whole operating system in 1991 (never minding, again, Richard Stallman, who started The GNU Project in 1983). See this recent farce, as an example on what I am talking about.
The facts are, that Linus Torvalds took an 8 years old operating system project, which only lacked the finished kernel, wrote a kernel and published the whole operating system (GNU system plus his own kernel) as "Linux." In my opinion, this operating system should be called simply "GNU," however Richard Stallman and the FSF wish to give both projects equal credit (for not equal work, mind you) calling the whole operating system "GNU/Linux." Still, most of the people call it just "Linux," refusing to mention GNU at all, for reasons which are beyond me. The same strange attitude we can observe with "Open Source Software" and The Open Source Initiative vs. "Free Software" and The Free Software Foundation.
Why is that so important? For a good example, see the "Linux" definition from this recent Sony Press Release from December 18, 2002:
"Linux: a Unix compatible open source operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, then a graduate student at the University of Helsinki."
Now I think it should be obvious for everyone. Keep in mind that I am talking about Sony here. This is the misinformation, which most of the people outside the community will take as truth. And when anyone will start to wonder why this software was started in the first place, she will go to Linus Torvalds and OSI's explainations, because she will not even know about the GNU and The Free Software Philosophy.
I think that the "Open Source Linux OS" vs. "Free Software GNU/Linux OS" schism is very harmful to the community at large, because the people outside of the hacker subculture have not only no idea who in fact has done which work, but they also have no idea why, which is much more important.
The real reason is freedom, but when people think that they use a "Linux OS," which was written by Linus Torvalds as an "open source software," which was invented by Eric Raymond, then they will never know that it is all about freedom at all. So, they are happy with proprietary device drivers, the very same thing which made Richard Stallman start The GNU Project in the first place.
This post will probably get moderated down, as most of Slashdot users unfortunately represent the let's-never-mention-GNU attitude of the young Internet community today. Of course, at the same time, some other post will get moderated up as +5 Funny, because it says GNU/this GNU/that -- yes, very funny indeed, especially after repeating this idiotic joke million times a week, not even stopping to think why it is important to talk about freedom, as the main motivation behind The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement at large...
Sad. Very sad.
Some people say that if you are not intelligent enough to use GNU Emacs text editor, then you should not publish anything anyway. I do not share this view, I think that everyone should have a right to free speech. However you are right that the situation today looks like this: either you have to be rich enough to buy Microsoft tools ($300 for operating system and $560 for Microsoft Office) or you have to be intelligent enough to learn how to write XHTML, CSS, Perl, SQL, sh and Apache configuarion files, as well as to learn how to use Emacs. Either way, this is elitism. In both cases, not everyone has the same possibilities to exercise her constitutional right to be heard, which is, in my opinion, not a fair situation at all.
I don't know if this was meant to be a joke (please excuse my lack of sense of humor then) but the age of those organisms is meaningless. I do not care if any given life form is one year old or million years old, as long as it is safe for humans. Remember that there are species, which have not been evolving for many years. There is no difference between such an organism today, and the same organism years ago, because it has not changed. The age is not an issue, the behavior is.
I certainly worry more about our own, Earth DNA. There is still no evidence of extraterrestrial life existence, which may just mean that no alien life form has reached our planet yet. That is why I do not worry about it. But I do worry about our domestic life forms, which -- unlike alien life forms -- are known to be sometimes lethal to other life forms of Earth.
What do you mean by "polluted"?
Then maybe it is high time to hire Counterpane Internet Security, Inc. or similar company. (Disclaimer: I don't have anything in common with Counterpane, other than I have read few books and lots of papers written by Bruce Schneier.) I think we should start thinking about hiring experts on Internet security to watch out networks, just like we hire experts for any other kind of security. That way our own emploees can focus on their work, not on the new exploit or on the new kind of lockpick and the new burgler gang in town.
Firewalling outgoing traffic can be useful in case some of the hosts on your network were compromised (e.g. by an email worm, which can go through even in the case every incoming connections are blocked) and you want to lessen the harm which can be done using this host. For example The HoneyNet Project uses a limit of 5 outgoing connections from every compromised host, because they don't want their hosts attacking the outside world. Of course, in the case of HoneyNet it is easy, because every outgoing connection is made by a successful intruder, however my point is that outgoing traffic can do some harm and this may be a reason people block some of it.
Here I absolutely agree.
Are these new features based on ideas from the Google contest, which took place some time ago? If so, what are the other ideas, which are not yet implemented, but which may be used in the future?
I am sorry, but the only reasonable advice I can give you is to change your ISP if they do not open more ports. You have only outgoing HTTP and SMTP? What about SSH? What about FTP? What about Telnet? What about IRC? Are you also going to tunnel them through HTTP? HTTP is a stateless and sessionless protocol. It is extremely bad idea to tunnel anything which uses long and interactive two-way TCP traffic (like IRC, SSH, FTP, Telnet, ...) using HTTP.
Not only it is technically bad idea,
you also compromise the firewall security if you use covert channels to hide all the forbidden traffic. The firewall rules to not allow
insecure (in the opinion of firewall management team) protocols traffic are ruined when their
users want to consciously
compromise the security.
We all know that using SSH or NTP is not insecure in itself, but when everyone tunnels everything bastardizing HTTP protocol, no one will ever notice when some day there is Back Orifice traffic hidden there between NTP, SSH, Telnet, FTP, IRC, et cetera.
So my advice is: talk to your ISP.
Tell them why you need NTP for security reasons (to have your logs useful).
Tell them what do you want them to change.
It is you,
who are paying them,
for the love of God, not the other way around.
Nothing will ever change unless people start
saying what do they want to be changed.
Actually, I was talking more about the Real Video formats (these is the only area I have any real informations about). As for Quick Time, I have not been following their development since the problems I had with their formats and codecs (e.g. Sorenson). But if that Quick Time format/codecs this story is about is truely free and open (by which I mean that it is patent-free, the full specification is available to anyone without NDAs and anyone can make its free software implementation), then I had to be mistaken about Quick Time and I will have to reeducate myself. Thank you for pointing it out, I am glad that they have chosen the free (as in freedom) way of designing multimedia codecs and file formats. I was also almost sure that the MPEG4 was not free format (i.e. not as free as Ogg formats), I had to be wrong, please excuse my ignorance then.
No, you are being mistaken. Those charges are important indeed, however they are not the key issue. Of course, as you have already stated, movies on the cell phone are useless. Even if there was no charges at all, there is no reason to have such feature other than to "show off," while with those charges the situation looks like this: it is the most expensive and the least convenient method for watching movies in the history of cinematography.
So why do they add such a useless functionality to they cell phones? Of course the most obvious reason would be to sell uselessly powerful hardware, but that is still not the most important issue.
The real answer, and I say it as someone who has spoken with employees of one of the key software companies in the market, is to lock people with proprietary codecs and/or file formats. Because when everyone has only Real Video and Quick Time on her cell phone few years from now in the future, she will be much less likely to record her grandchildren family movies in Ogg Theora/Vorbis format, if she won't be able to watch them on her cell phone.
You may say that it is not important in which format someone stores movies of one's children or cat, but it is very important to make sure it will not be convenient for people to use free and open formats. After all, this is what average people want, not freedom, not liberty, not even safety, but convenience. And when it is inconvenient to use open formats, and convenient to use only proprietary formats, they will try to make fees for making movies, or maybe even for every distributed copy.
And here are the big money. Grandma will say "Oh, this is nothing 50 cents for every person I will send this movie to," but the recording industry with its legacy business model will be safe, as no one will be able to compete with them as an independent movie or music maker, without paying them money. And this is, people, how the monopolies are built and maintained.
Please consider this issues. Because so far, the most popular attitude is this: "Those, who can give up essential liberty... Ooooh! A new shiny cell phone with proprietary file formats! This is so cool! Where do I sign up?!" This is sad, but that way, nothing will ever change. And this is what I sadly observe, even here on Slashdot.
It is hard to copy things, all right, the technology will save us!
Oops! It is now easier to copy things, we need to make a copyright law. It is now illegal to copy things, all right, the law will save us!
Oops! It is illegal but still easy to copy things, we need to invent copy prevention techniques. It is now hard to copy things again, all right, the technology will save us!
Oops! It is impossible to make copy prevention techniques, we need DMCA. It is now illegal to make things which help copy things, all right, the law will save us!
When will the madness stop?
I don't know the URL of this website, however I know the program to generate this number. You can download it here and this is how you must run it:
perl -leprint\"3.\",0\ x\ number
Where number is the number of decimal places you want it to compute. I hope it helps.
These are great news, for people interested in science (I read about it some time ago), however I am afraid it will give new arguments to all of those people, who believe, that the landing on the Moon was a hoax. These people, as well as everyone, who believes in the, so called, "conspiracy theories," are usually so ignorant (some people say they are "stupid," but, as a man of science, I have to respect even those points of view, which I don't agree with, or which are simply wrong, so I refuse using the term "stupid" to insult these people--after all, people tend to believe in many strange theories and religions, which, in my opinion, doesn't automatically make them "stupid"), that they will not listen to our explanations that this technology is very new and that we had no such computers in 1969, which would be even comparable with what we have today. This, however, can start the argument all over again. I hope NASA has already thought about counter arguments in that discussion.
Do you think there is any chance Microsoft could release GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd version of Microsoft Bob in a form of X11 window manager? It has very low system requirements (80486, 8MB RAM, 32MB HD) which makes it perfect for teaching kids the basics of computer usage (together with such projects like Debian Junior, GNU and Education, LinuxForKids, SEUL/edu, etc.) on low-end PC hardware. Some time ago, I was looking for a good window manager/desktop environment and, while there are many good applications, I couldn't find any graphical user interface itself, which would be similar to Microsoft Bob. What I need is not only something easy to learn, but also actually fun to play with, so the kids will want to learn the basics of computer science. Do you know any projects, which I could use here? (Free software would be the best.) Thanks.
He may be a nut (and, in fact, I'm fairly sure he is) but he has done more than anyone else to the Open Source Movement, i.e. he started it. He is to the Open Source Movement, what Albert Einstein is to the Special Theory of Relativity, what Martin Luther is to the Lutheran Church, and what Samuel Hahnemann is to Homeopathy. He is also to the Free Software Movement, what Albert Einstein is to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, what Martin Luther is to Catholic Church, and what Samuel Hahnemann is to Pharmacy. And for that, I think he deserves our respect. I am sure everyone will agree with me about that. So, please, at the very least, show some respect, for God's sake!
Amen. I absolutely agree. "open source" != "free software" I wish more people have read GNU Philosophy to know that. Please let me suggest you all (and by "you all" I mean all the people who do not yet understand the difference between open source and free software, not Eht of course) reading these particularly important texts:
When, in 1998, Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and renamed them as the Open Source Definition, he didn't want his new movement being misinterpreted as the Free Software Movement, and especially the strong philosophy associated with the term "free software" since at least 1983. Otherwise he would have used the old "free software" term, not the new "open source." Please let us have some respect to his work.
See MNG4IE, an ActiveX control for viewing MNG in Microsoft Internet Explorer by Jason Summers, which installation is a simple matter of clicking the right link. There's also MNG Plug-in by Jason Summers. I don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer (I use Mozilla, which doesn't have such problems), but I know that there are actually many different ways of using MNG in that browser (like using a QuickTime MNG component for example). You can find out more informations on MNG and libmng web sites.
Of course, since the libmng license "specifically permit[s], without fee, and encourage[s] the use of this source code as a component to supporting the MNG and JNG file format in commercial products," there is absolutely no excuse why libmng shouldn't be used natively by Microsoft Internet Explorer. Of course, a detailed specification of the MNG format is freely available, so anyone can support MNG even without using libmng, which makes it absolutely unacceptable to not support MNG in any modern web browser. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer I would suggest you sending a feature request, or even a bug report, asking them to add native MNG support.
convert file.xcf file.mng
Use ImageMagick, which is, in my opinion, the best "robust collection of tools and libraries (...) to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 87 major formats)." You can also write
convert -delay 100 frame*.png anim.mng
and make a MNG animation anim.mng from individual frames frame01.png, frame02.png, etc. That way you don't have to use multilayer file format as your input. ImageMagick is great for such uses.
This is simply not true. Please show me any popular MP3 player, which cannot play Ogg Vorbis today.
Really? Could you back it up with any meaningful data, Mr. Anonymous Coward? (If that is your real name.)
And is it not a great advantage by itself?
Technically it is better. You would know that if you knew both standards internal details. (Or maybe you do know, but you are one of those people who just love starting meaningless discussions on Slashdot?) Please do not spread such a disinformation. It is less popular than MP3, like the JPEG used to be less popular than GIF. But it had nothing to do with the "lower quality of JPEG." Debian GNU/Hurd is also less popular than Microsoft Windows. Do you think it is a reason not to use it ever? Or is it because of the quality of any of those systems? Or maybe some things are just popular, because they are popular?
Of course, I was talking about the distribution. For storage he should use MIDI for MIDI-only music, while FLAC would be perfect* for anything more than MIDI (i.e. vocal and other sound otherwise impossible to store as MIDI). For MIDI music, MIDI is the best format, because it's quality-independent (like Postscript).
*However FLAC (and any lossless audio compression for that matter) is only good if you need a perfect copy, which can make sense only if your recording and digitalization process (sampling as well as quantization) was perfect. In reality it is rare, even for professional recording studios, to record and digitalize music with lower noise to signal ratio than the error which the high quality Vorbis encoding (usually even -q8) would introduce, never mind that it is rare for homo sapiens to actually hear this error, which, unlike the recording noise, is specifically designed to use known imperfection of human ear.
But, however stupid it may be, this is very common for people to store lossless compression (or even no compression at all, like .wav) of music recorded
in such a way, which has already introduced
much more noise that even
Vorbis at quality setting -q4 would cause.
Remember that even such a high quality as -q9
reduces the file size 4 times,
while I personally haven't found anyone
who could tell -q6 Vorbis
(which was about 14% of the original in size)
from the original, having the most expensive audiophile sound equipment I've ever seen.
This is actually a very interesting experiment. Take some great quality classical music recording and encode it with oggenc -q0, -q1..., -q10. Then, when you have 12 files (11 .ogg and the original .wav), shuffle them
(really shuffle, e.g. using a deck of cards with track numbers written on them)
and randomly burn them on a CD,
after converting them back to uncompressed PCM.
(Remember to use good encoder and decoder,
like the original Xiph.org's Ogg Vorbis software.)
If the recording is short enough,
then encode more versions,
-q0, -q0.5, -q1, -q1.5, etc. -- the more
versions, the better the test result
but more than 20 different versions can be annoying to the person you are testing.
Remember the order and give it to someone who thinks has great ears (and great equipment) to sort in in increasing quality, while being able to listen and change tracks for as long as she wants. Give it to every person who wants to take this test, while shuffling the tracks diffrently for everyone.
Most of people with good equipment will correctly sort everything up to -q4, but very few people will find the -q5 and even less will correctly find -q6. I can guarantee you that -q8, -q9, -q10 and the original will be sorted totally randomly.
But, when you don't shuffle the tracks before you burn them and show the sorted CD to someone to judge, almost everyone will tell you that they hear the quality difference between every track if they know they are sorted. This is because they think they should hear it. It's like a placebo effect and this is why you should always make a blind test, using a shuffled tracks.
So, in other words, "Storage is going to take gigs, and be magnitudes higher quality than anyone could ever hope ogg to be without being similarly sized" (emphasis added) is simply not true. Please don't spread such disinformation. Thank you.
It is beyond my imagination why on Earth anyone would want to use GIF, now when we have PNG. GIF used to be the best format for some kinds of graphics in the past, but then came JPEG for natural photographic lossy compression (yes, photographic pictures used to be stored as GIF before JPEG) and later came PNG for lossless compression (giving us everything the GIF format has, plus 32-bit RGBA with real alpha channel, better compression, gamma correction, file integrity checks, seven-pass two-dimensional interlacing, et cetera). Now GIF is not even remotely optimal in any niche. Besides, its 8 bits per pixel limit is laughable in the year 2002.
Don't tell me that we need GIF for animated banners, they are useless and still we have MNG for that. (I'm talking about animated raster images, not vector graphics, for which there is SVG, or the proprietary Flash format.)
Or maybe you need the LZW itself? Then why won't you use zlib or libbz2?
If you think that we should use GIF to make a point against software patents then it is already too late. When freely using GIF becomes legal, then it is not civil disobedience any more. If now we all start to use GIF, they win. Why? Because that would mean that it was a good idea to patent LZW, as now when the patent expires, everyone finally benefits having and being able to use the wonderful file format which the GIF is.
The problem with that situation is that GIF was useless long before the patent would expire, therefore giving no contribution whatsoever to the community at large. And remember that this is the whole point of patent law. Patent law is not for inventor's benefit, it is for humanity benefit, while the inventor's temporary monopoly for her invention is merely a trade-off, a compromise needed to achieve the real goal.
When the patent expiration time is to long, humanity don't benefit at all, and this is the real problem with software patents, because with software often a 5-year period is unacceptable. A GIF-related patents expiring in 2002 is like zeppelin patent expiring in 2250. Great, we all can now fly zeppelins! But who cares?
Many people still keep using proprietary MP3 file format, which is unfortunate not because of its lower quality to size ratio, which is hard to hear for an average person, who doesn't even usually hear any difference between 192kbps and 256kbps constant bitrate MP3 files, but because of its legal issues. While Vorbis is technically similar to JPEG graphics format, i.e. it's a "lossy" compression, it is legally similar to PNG, while MP3 is in that analogy similar to GIF, using LZW compression patented by Unisys. See the MP3/MP3PRO Patent and Software Licensing Information website and search Google for "MP3 patent" to find more informations about this issue.
Also, I hope, and I'm sure most of the people here will agree with me, there will be a little "(O)" mark, next to your copyright statement! Good luck! We'll be looking for your links in the Open Music Registry!
(And please, don't post this old stupid joke that we should use double OAL logo, "because (o)(o) looks better," because it doesn't. It looks like an immature joke made by a 15-year-old child, while EFF's OAL should be taken seriously if we ever want it to successfully compete with the recording industry at large.)
From the What is TheOpenCD website:
I'm sorry, but what is exactly open source philosophy? Open source is about technical and economical advantages. Free software is about philosophy. Please do not flame me for saying the obvious. When Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and published them as Open Source Definition in 1998 he did it exactly because he wanted free software without the strong philosophy associated with the "free software" term since at least the announcement of the GNU Project in 1983.
I think that TheOpenCD project should not talk about philosophy if they want to promote the open source movement. But if they think that the philosophy is important, then they should promote the free software movement and change their name to TheFreeCD. Because the philosophy is exactly the difference between free software and open source movements. If they talk about "open source philosophy" they are being against the main priciples of both movements.
TheOpenCD project people should read these books:
Those books are not very long, but they provide enough background to let avoid using such unfortunate oxymorons like "open source philosophy." I strongly respect both free software and open source movements and I can not stay ignorant when people insult any of them, while the term "open source philosophy" insults both.
You are being very naive. Please read this comment of mine, I don't want to repeat myself. The point is, that basically a "security guarantee backed by a cash reward" doesn't mean anything. I'm really surprised that people, sometimes even educated people, are still trusting in such poor marketing tools as "cracking contests."
It's hard to believe that people are still trusting in software security, because no one has won some cracking contest yet. Gene Spafford, Sameer Parekh, Jon Wiederspan, Jeff Weinstein, Bruce Schneier... -- they have been writing about it for decades.
Please let me quote part of The Fallacy of Cracking Contests from the December 1998 issue of Crypto-Gram by Bruce Schneier:
Bruce Schneier writes mostly about cryptanalysis contests but the situation is basically the same with the software security cracking contests. Let me also quote Hacker Challenges -- Boon or Bane? from the February 1996 issue of Electronic CIPHER. It's almost seven years old, but even today many people still seem to not understand it:
So, let me repeat: it is NOT necessarily secure just because no one has ever published a flaw in tinydns (we can't even assume no one has found it). There may be a cash reward for anyone who can prove that it is flawed, but even if no one has proven it yet, it doesn't mean it is not flawed. Remember that it doesn't mean that someone has proven it's secure -- it just means no one has proven it's insecure, which is something totally different. Hopefully, people will understand it some day.