I'm writing this on my iPAQ 3650 waiting to see a doctor at a clinic in Santa Cruz CA. I'm on the net with a Merlin Ricochet modem. Unfortunately, I dumped Linux last night and reloaded CE because support for the new dual PCMCIA sleeve isn't in the stable HH release yet. (This is unfortunate not only for philosophical reasons, but because the "home" button in Pocket IE is right below the soft keyboard's space bar. This means I lose everything between my last preview and whenever I hit "home" by mistake periodically.) My impression of the various Linux distros for the iPAQ is that they are almost unbearably cool, but aren't ready for naive user primetime. Stupid button placement notwithstanding, WinCE is a lot easier to use than any of the handheld Linux platforms I've tried. Of course, those linuces weren't intended as general-use systems, but as research platforms.
On the flipside,
it's an ironic fact that there's more software available for the iPAQ on Linux than on CE, due to the explosion in Linux over recent years and the hard work and dedication of volunteers, particularly those at handhelds.org in this case. For example, AFAIK, there's no MAME port for CE, but xmame works (with some difficulty) on the Intimate iPAQ distro.
I'm sure that lots of folks are interested in usability for mobile Linux solutions. After stability, I think usability is critical to commercial success in the handheld PDA market. Developers might want to take a clue from Palm's success, and "dumb down" their UI's so they are simpler to use. Microsoft learned that lesson with CE. 3.0 is much simpler than it's predecessors.
For myself, I'll keep buying the latest hardware and loading the (almost) latest Linux for it because I can, and because it's fun. But my Mother won't get anywhere near an iPAQ running Linux except when looking over my shoulder while I run my latest mame rom. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Yes, BSD may have used this partition type before Thinkpads (although Thinkpads have had this kind of suspend feature for a long, long time).
Actually they have used a hibernate file heretofore. That approach required using FAT32 as the Windows filesystem.
The ironic thing about all this is that Thinkpads were well regarded in the *BSD community before this. IBM has sacraficed a ton of good will that they probably didn't know they had!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Those are all good points of parliamentary democracy. However there are drawbacks too. Those coalition governments tend to be fragile. They are apt to shatter when issues that gore the ox of smaller partners come up. To cite a recent example, the defection of the Shaas party from Barak's ruling coalition in Israel weakened his government at a crucial point. Sometimes nations have to make hard choices that run against the interests of significant minorities, or even those of the majority.
Many of the U.S. founding fathers were distrustful of the unfiltered will of the people. Remember that the franchise was originally restricted to (white, male) property owners. This was a group that had a vested interest in stability. This distrust of direct popular rule was also why the founders built in non-proportional institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College and why they carefully built a system of balanced powers to rein in not only the "will of the people", but the interests of various elites as well.
The obvious downside to the Republican system of government is its lack of responsiveness to popular will and its catering to powerful interests. But that can be an advantage when the mob is calling for blood in the streets!
For you liberals, can you imagine what the country would have looked like after the Religious Right got through with it at the height of their influence under a parliamentary system? For the conservatives, how would you have liked the country after the New Left had had its run in the 60's and 70's? Or how would either of you enjoyed living in Nazi Germany after Hitler had subverted the parliamentary democracy in that country?
Food for thought.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
If we end up being able to run smbd from the main samba project for our file sharing, and the TNG PDC stuff for user/machine authentication simultaneously, then this will be a win. If it's all-or-nothing with either project, then we lose.
Of course it should always be possible to run samba with security=server pointing at a TNG server. I'd just like to be sure I can run both on the same box.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
According to Science, the administration has been fighting NASA's desire to send two landers:
NASA and the White House are locked in a quiet but intense struggle over the future scale of Mars exploration. NASA wants to send two landers to Mars in 2003, but the Administration is wary of the additional cost. The issue led to the cancellation this week of an announcement about Mars missions, and it might spur a budgetary gamble on NASA's part, Science reports in the 28 July issue.
The news item notes that NASA wants to send two landers to reduce the risk of mission failure, but is facing resistance from the White House:
Doubling up means a heftier price tag, however, and the White House is loath to ask Congress for more Mars money in 2001 and future years. "It's big bucks," says one Administration manager. The White House may still approve two landers--but on the condition that NASA cut current programs to pay for an expanded Mars effort. That would be bitter medicine for an overall space science effort already strapped for cash.
And it's not just the White House. Congress is taking a dim view of NASA's budgets as well:
NASA chiefs must move quickly. The larger program would require more planning, and NASA had already set a 1 August decision deadline to ensure that it could meet the 2003 launch date. Yet NASA won't know its 2001 budget--which is still stalled in Congress--until fall, while the 2002 budget request won't be released until next year. So if the agency wants two landers, it may have to gamble that there will be money to do it. Says one Administration manager: "We're playing a high-stakes game."
This is obviously why NASA announced they are considering "one or two" landers.
So write your congress critters. Tell them what you think about their budget priorities in an age of government tax surpluses. Tell them you want to vacation on Mars, and you'll send them straight to Io if they don't help you get there!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Angry responses may indicate you've struck a chord here, so to speak.
To survive, a non-monopolistic distribution channel must add value to the distibuted stuff over and above what the channel charges. This has to happen both for the consumer and the producer of the stuff. What you've done here is to point out a value that a network based music distribution system could add for the consumer: content assurance. Up to now, I haven't seen why why music lovers (who don't mind ripping off the channel - and artists) should go along with content protection schemes that impose restrictions on how the content is used, ala DVD. This approach might offer them a reason. It still doesn't address the monopolistic nature of the current music distribution channel, or resolve questions of copyright and fair use in the digital age. And these issues will still drive people looking for ways to "route around" the official channels that are seen as greedy and repressive by many.
A digital signature could verify that the content being transferred was the real mccoy. It could also spot your eggs. I can imagine a technological arms race analogous to the computer virus industry (through the looking glass) springing up. Even though detecting spurious content would be slower than producing it, if you are the only one producing eggs, you will lose that race. The RIAA would have the resources to win, though. Gee, that's swell.
How can we disintermediate these guys? They are terrified of that possibility, why? What value do they add for artists that we could satisfy otherwise? The incentive might be 50% royalties for artists, and 50% reduction in costs for consumers. This on an exploding marketplace for digital music that could make further reductions in margins attractive.
Just a dream. *sigh*
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Re:Flooding the Judge
on
DeCSS Update
·
· Score: 1
... stop stealing QODT's from/.'s...
So, is the QOTD copyrighted, patented or a trade secret? If it's patented, I can show prior art. (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dbaxo/quote.htm) If it's a trade secret, the beans were spilled in the 1920's. If it's copyright,/. has one hell of a legal burden quashing all the violations. (C.f. 926 hits on the following AltaVista search.
Besides, I've been using that sig since before there was a slashdot!
Insolent puppy. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Re:Flooding the Judge
on
DeCSS Update
·
· Score: 1
Right. Hopefully they'll apply some filtering...
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Y' know, bombarding the judge with emailed advocacy might not be the best way to proceed here. Judges live in the same world we do, but they are used to weighing closely reasoned legal arguments. They also tend to treasure their independence from political pressure and popular opinion. In a situation where the plaintiffs are claiming they need special protection due to a torrent of angry emails, a new flood of (gatewayed) emails, whatever their content (the judge doesn't even have to read 'em) could serve to underscore their claims.
IANL, but I play one in the shadowbox show in my head.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Io flybys occurred on 11 October 1999 (I24), 26 November 1999 (I25), and 22 February 2000 (I27). Both I24 and I25 suffered from spacecraft or instrument anomalies that eliminated or degraded some observations, but more than 100 useful images with resolutions from ~10 to 500 m/pixel were returned. I27 was a fully successful encounter, but much of the data have not yet been returned or analyzed.
So the best science data may be yet to come!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
The formation and destruction of landforms such as mountains and calderas are also much more rapid on Io than on other planets, so Io is a unique laboratory to study processes normally inferred from the incomplete geologic record.
Mountains come and go on this planet like technology fads. This looks like a very rewarding place to study!
I'd say you can forget aboult life on IO with that kind of volatility in the geology.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Re-reading my original post I see that I did directly compare Meyer and Stallman as apparently having black and white views of the free software issue.
What was it you wanted me to be careful about there? 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
I've never seen RMS use ad hominem attacks, either. What Meyer points out is that a lot of RMS's rhetoric contains implied 'ad homini" attacks. I'm not sure of my Latin grammer or spelling there. What I mean is "against the men" as opposed to "against the man." (NOT "against the grits!") Regarding ownership of software, RMS writes:
But if a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and what you can do with a copy if you buy one. The difference is not just a matter of money. The system of owners of software encourages software owners to produce something---but not what society really needs. And it causes intangible ethical pollution that affects us all.
Now, by implication, doesn't this make anyone who asserts proprietary rights to software an "ethical polluter?" Stallman is poisoning the rhetorical well by adopting a moral position that defines his opponents as unethical polluters. Jerry Falwell could learn a thing or two. Now, it's true that this is a far cry from Meyer's shaking his finger at esr's gun politics and crying "shame!"
In any event, I didn't compare Meyer to Stallman so much as Meyer to Meyer's idea of Stallman.. The joke is that Meyer outdoes his own strawman!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
In 1988 or 89, Bertrand Meyer needed to test his Eiffel compiler on a VAX/VMS system running Eunice, Dave Kashtan's 4.2 BSD emulator. Folks in the UCSB CS department pointed him at the Physics department where I was the sysadmin. His people asked us for one or two weekend days on theory.ucsb.edu to build the Eiffel compiler and test it out. They offered us a copy of Eiffel for our trouble. I asked them if we could have the source instead. They seemed shocked, and eventually said "no". I wasn't suprised, and said "OK" anyway. (I wouldn't have gotten away with saying "no." Mr. Meyer had a lot of friends at UC Santa Barbara and that's how things get done in academia) I offer this not as a criticism of Mr. Meyer, but as proof that he's held similar views for a long time. Also it's an interesting sidelight in view of his evident resentment against "Taxpayer-funded software."
Interesting article. Meyer points out some glaring problems with the extreme views of many in the free software camp. I found his own glaring problems pretty amusing however. He accuses Richard Stallman et.al. of blanket ad hominum attacks against purveyors of proprietary software, then goes on to his own personal attack on esr:
Eric Raymond, another of the leaders of the free software movement (who prefers the term "open source") uses his Web page to proselytize for gun rights. Here we move from the politically naive to the revolting. Only one quote will suffice, although readers interested in this propaganda can find heaps of it at http//www.netaxs.com/~esr/guns/gun-e thics.html and neighboring pages. The title is Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life; note the reference to ethics. It starts:
"There is nothing like having your finger on the trigger of a gun to reveal who you really are. Life or death in one twitch --- ultimate decision, with the ultimate price for carelessness or bad choices. It is a kind of acid test, an initiation, to know that there is lethal force in your hand and all the complexities and ambiguities of moral choice have fined down to a single action: fire or not?"
Such balderdash would be easy to dismiss if it were not highly visible from the author's Open Source pages (I came across it when looking for Mr. Raymond's touted essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar") and didn't have any ethical implications.
This is followed by a blistering political attack on "gun nuts", a position I happen to agree with, but was embarrased to see put forward with such venom and vitrol. Bertrand Meyer seems to ignore his own lofty statement earlier in the article that
... bad people can defend good causes. A corrupt and dishonest politician may sincerely support principles of democracy and freedom. His personal failings do not disqualify the ideas of democracy and freedom any more than the Nazi regime's impressive building of autobahnen disqualifies the merits of freeways.
Not that I necessarily agree that esr is a bad person. I do think that the connection between his ideas on guns and hos ideas on open source software was not well established by Mr. Meyer's article. In the absence of such a clear connection, this section of the article can only viewed as an example of the smear tactics Meyer accuses Stallman et al of engaging in.
Some of Meyer's other criticisms hit closer to the mark in my opinion. The idea that anyone who engages in the production of proprietary software is evil is ludicrous and detracts from the effectiveness of free software evangelism. Fortunately, the world is not made up of black-and-white opposites as both Richard Stallman and Bertrand Meyer seem to think. These two stand near opposite poles of a continuous, complicated field of belief and practise. Software developers are free to choose from a variety of open source licenses for their wares, or to sell their time to commercial concerns. Many select several items from the menu presented, to the betterment of themselves, and yes, to the world in general.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Well, that's the conspiricy theory in a nutshell. The fact that Samba team members signed the original posting that made it clear they had at least read the EULA makes it that much more plausable,
Like most conspiricy theories, this one gathers seemingly contradictory facts together in a framework that seems to resolve the contradictions. The punchline of this theory is that Microsoft has devised a fiendishly clever plan to legally sabotage one of the leading open source projects in order to ensure the hegemony of Windows. It goes without saying that this coda plays well with the/. community. I endorsed this theory myself in my comment on the original story.
Over the past several days I've had a chance to read more about this melodrama and think a bit about what I've read. One thing in particular bothers me about the tidy theory of Microsoft's evil machinations. As a earlier comment in this thread points out, Microsoft is not assured of prevailing in any court case that might result from this brouhaha. This would surely have occured to a nameless evil redmondian puppet master smart enough to predict the reaction to the "release" of the Kerberos extensions. What's at stake for Microsoft if it loses a court case over this issue? Control of the Kerberos extensions that the whole conspiricy was supposed to ensure.
On the other hand, the comments of nice Microsoft employee #1 and nice Microsoft employee #2 ring true with my experience of large organizations. They tend to work at cross-purposes and to speak with more than one voice. Now, I am not a Microsoft lackey, and I personally hope the antitrust case gets fast-tracked to the Supreme Court where every iota of the USDOJ's proposed remedies gets implemented. Nonetheless, I now think something like the following scenario may be closer to the truth:
Microsoft designs Kerberos extensions both to "embrace and extend" the protocol, and to make it work better in Win2K.
Microsoft catches heck from the community for designing proprietary extensions to an open protocol
Well meaning engineers, perhaps supported by PR people, push to publish the extensions.
Knee-jerk responses from the legal department and upper management result in the stupid "auto-EULA" packaging.
Nobody technical enough to understand how WinZip works is consulted in designing the packaging. Well meaning engineers aren't volunteering anything.
Both theories are speculative, and ultimatly irrelevant to/.'s position in all this. I add my voice to the encouragement expressed by most to continue fighting Microsoft's heavy-handed attempts at censorship. Partly because of this issue, I donated $150.00 to the EFF. I encourage everyone with the means to click here to join this valuable organization.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Oh great. How's this for a conspiricy theory? Microsoft widely distributes their Kerberos subverting extensions in a manner that preserves their rights to protection under trade secret law. Predictibly, someoneposts the whole spec to slashdot.
Now let's say someone else reverse engineers their crud. Someone from the Samba project, say. Microsoft hits them with a lawsuit claiming violation of trade secrets. When the respondent claims reverse engineering, Microsoft can point out that those dastards at slashdot spread the spec all over the Internet. They can also prove that someone on the Samba project at least read the license.
Of course, Microsoft might give Samba a royalty free license if they were asked nicely. Right.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
You have a good point on its face. However I don't think American's are the only ones in the world to indulge the peculiar fetish of free speech. I seem to recall that anonymous remailers exist all over the globe, for instance. Then too, there's the fact that this site (and many others with similar orientation) lives on a U.S. server, is run by a U.S. company and caters to a predominantly U.S. community. I realise that the Internet is growing much faster outside the U.S. than within. But the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do in terms of Internet use. And even when U.S. sites and users are in the minority, I suspect many of the values that originated in the U.S. net community will remain. Of course, so will other U.S. innovations, like Spam.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
I can understand why a person subjected to the level of abuse Jon Katz has might call into question the flammable culture of the Internet. What really concerns me though, is his unspoken premise that avoiding hurt feelings should weigh heavier than freedom to speak.
Flaming, like skateboarding, seems overwhelmingly an adolescent form of recreation. Whole segments of the human population - women, the elderly, those who speak foreign languages, newcomers, children - are excluded from the conversation or choose to avoid it.
Jon Katz argues that "hostile environments" turn off the timid and thus place a "chill" on their poor, downtrodden speech. This assertion reminds me unpleasantly of the culture of victimhood that has given rise to over the top hysterical social evils such as the "repressed memory" movement, the equation of (even relatively tame) hostile speech with sexual discrimination, the seizure of property without due process in drug cases and many other silly but deadly mind games played by lawyers, therapists, legislators and average citizens.
The other problem I have with Jon Katz's article is the logical cul-de-sac he seems to want to force us with the seemingly inconsistent traffic signs of "victimized innocents" on the one hand and Orwellian mind control (in the form of self censorship through moderation) on the other:
This moderating is sometimes called "steering" or "over-steering," part of a broad movement on the Net that allows sites and individual users to limit their own horizons. Sometimes this is a response to the sheer volume of information, sometimes an effort to screen out unwanted points of view. While flamers keep their right to assault, individuals - entirely voluntarily - create personal insulated zones where they can block anything unplelasant, challenging or disturbing. The dangers are obvious. One of the Net's most significant contributions is to bring all sorts of people together. But the growing "freedom from speech" movement is spawning communities in which people will find only opinions they already agree with.
So "hate speech" is an "assault" on innocent victims and moderation of the sort practised here leads to bland homogeneity free from disturbing and/or challenging opinions. What's left for us to do? The answer, I suspect, appears earlier in the article:
On some sites, vicious posts get removed and vicious posters eventually ejected. Some provide hosts to steer conversations.
Yes, it would probably be satisfactory to Katz to have a model that involved active censorship. How you do this when you also provide real anonimity to your posters is an open question.
I get the impression that Jon Katz may not trust this community to police itself. This is understandable when you take into account the fact that he's not actually a member of the Slashdot community, as others have noted.
I've enjoyed most of what I've read of Jon Katz's previous writings, both here and on HotWired. This is the first time I've felt excercised enough to respond to something he's written. Thanks for the foil, Jon!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
My mail to them is still sitting in my sendmail queue. I hope the difficulty with their SMTP service is only due to a large volume of well reasoned mail, and not any illegal attempt to damage their network infrastructure. Such attempts would only serve to undermine the credibilty of the Internet community and diminish the force of reasoned argument in dissuading Leonardo Finance from their folly.
I guess that's 3 cents now. 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
After granting so many absurdly generic and/or obvious patents, maybe these guys have finally woken up. Or, maybe not. The referenced article states that the basis for the review is prior art published by IBM in '91.
*sigh* I have a long-standing suspicion that the root cause for the issuance of many of these silly patents is the inability of patent examiners to grasp what is "obvious" to a programmer. Say it's 1989 and you have to write some code that will import and export accounting data to a 3090 mainframe that uses two-digit dates. With a century rollover coming in 11 years, how do you tell what century the data were generated in? The "obvious" solution to a programmer would be to choose some reasonable cut-off two digit date, say 50, and treat all years before that as belonging to the next century. If you were dealing with personnel records with birthdates, 10 might be more appropriate. In any event, that's windowing and it's an obvious patch on the Y2K problem.
Now, if the PTO could only see how obvious "one click" was, the world would be a better place! 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
I have sent the following email to the contact addresses listed on the Leonardo Finance web site:
I urge you to abandon your shortsighted persecution of Association Leonardo. The kindest light in which your actions could be viewed would be to suppose that you undertook your lawsuit out of ignorance of the true nature of the organization you were attacking. Surely entrepreneurial energy is not incompatible with art and art scholarship? How on Earth can your reconcile the vicious legal attack you have launched on a prestigious academic arts organization with values you claim for yourself on your web site?
The "shareholder-experts" are free and independent, but they all share the same values : market economy, belief in the individual, creativity and innovation.
To the above excerpt from your web site should be added the following qualifying statement:
Except when others in the France and the World at large try to use the name of one of the greatest creative geniuses of the last 500 years, Leonardo da Vinci. And for what? To promote art! What has that got to do with creating wealth?
Your attempts to stifle artistic freedom are bound to fail in any civilized court of law. In the meantime, you are doing irreparable harm to your reputation. Please reconsider your ill-advised actions in this matter.
Sincerely,
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
That first sentence you quote, together with the following sentence are actually rather crafty:
The partition types used by the Linux and Windows operating systems are incompatible. To remove Linux from your computer and install Windows 2000 or Windows NT, you must manually delete the partition used by the Linux operating system.
Without any context or Linux knowledge, this seems to imply that Linux and Win2K can't reside on the same machine. It's a perfectly deniable implication. If you parse the second sentence fully, it doesn't actually say that. But I find it difficult to believe that the masters of FUD didn't intend it to confuse customers.
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
I found RMS' story about POSIX almost being called IEEEIX amusing. I disagree with him however that the community would have responded by calling the standard "Unix like." I think they would just have called it "Yikes!" 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
The FreeBSD positions are for implementation and software engineers. I infer from this that their front-end runs on Solaris, and the backend on freebie. Honestly, this is a little embarassing for Microsoft, but on the other hand it shows a certain willingness to use what works well. On the other hand, it wouldn't be good PR if the number one free email site fell apart over a conversion to Win2K.
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
Slashdot Mirror
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
On the flipside, it's an ironic fact that there's more software available for the iPAQ on Linux than on CE, due to the explosion in Linux over recent years and the hard work and dedication of volunteers, particularly those at handhelds.org in this case. For example, AFAIK, there's no MAME port for CE, but xmame works (with some difficulty) on the Intimate iPAQ distro.
I'm sure that lots of folks are interested in usability for mobile Linux solutions. After stability, I think usability is critical to commercial success in the handheld PDA market. Developers might want to take a clue from Palm's success, and "dumb down" their UI's so they are simpler to use. Microsoft learned that lesson with CE. 3.0 is much simpler than it's predecessors.
For myself, I'll keep buying the latest hardware and loading the (almost) latest Linux for it because I can, and because it's fun. But my Mother won't get anywhere near an iPAQ running Linux except when looking over my shoulder while I run my latest mame rom. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Actually they have used a hibernate file heretofore. That approach required using FAT32 as the Windows filesystem.
The ironic thing about all this is that Thinkpads were well regarded in the *BSD community before this. IBM has sacraficed a ton of good will that they probably didn't know they had!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Many of the U.S. founding fathers were distrustful of the unfiltered will of the people. Remember that the franchise was originally restricted to (white, male) property owners. This was a group that had a vested interest in stability. This distrust of direct popular rule was also why the founders built in non-proportional institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College and why they carefully built a system of balanced powers to rein in not only the "will of the people", but the interests of various elites as well.
The obvious downside to the Republican system of government is its lack of responsiveness to popular will and its catering to powerful interests. But that can be an advantage when the mob is calling for blood in the streets!
For you liberals, can you imagine what the country would have looked like after the Religious Right got through with it at the height of their influence under a parliamentary system? For the conservatives, how would you have liked the country after the New Left had had its run in the 60's and 70's? Or how would either of you enjoyed living in Nazi Germany after Hitler had subverted the parliamentary democracy in that country?
Food for thought.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
If we end up being able to run smbd from the main samba project for our file sharing, and the TNG PDC stuff for user/machine authentication simultaneously, then this will be a win. If it's all-or-nothing with either project, then we lose.
Of course it should always be possible to run samba with security=server pointing at a TNG server. I'd just like to be sure I can run both on the same box.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
The news item notes that NASA wants to send two landers to reduce the risk of mission failure, but is facing resistance from the White House:
And it's not just the White House. Congress is taking a dim view of NASA's budgets as well:
This is obviously why NASA announced they are considering "one or two" landers.
So write your congress critters. Tell them what you think about their budget priorities in an age of government tax surpluses. Tell them you want to vacation on Mars, and you'll send them straight to Io if they don't help you get there!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Angry responses may indicate you've struck a chord here, so to speak.
To survive, a non-monopolistic distribution channel must add value to the distibuted stuff over and above what the channel charges. This has to happen both for the consumer and the producer of the stuff. What you've done here is to point out a value that a network based music distribution system could add for the consumer: content assurance. Up to now, I haven't seen why why music lovers (who don't mind ripping off the channel - and artists) should go along with content protection schemes that impose restrictions on how the content is used, ala DVD. This approach might offer them a reason. It still doesn't address the monopolistic nature of the current music distribution channel, or resolve questions of copyright and fair use in the digital age. And these issues will still drive people looking for ways to "route around" the official channels that are seen as greedy and repressive by many.
A digital signature could verify that the content being transferred was the real mccoy. It could also spot your eggs. I can imagine a technological arms race analogous to the computer virus industry (through the looking glass) springing up. Even though detecting spurious content would be slower than producing it, if you are the only one producing eggs, you will lose that race. The RIAA would have the resources to win, though. Gee, that's swell.
How can we disintermediate these guys? They are terrified of that possibility, why? What value do they add for artists that we could satisfy otherwise? The incentive might be 50% royalties for artists, and 50% reduction in costs for consumers. This on an exploding marketplace for digital music that could make further reductions in margins attractive.
Just a dream. *sigh*
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
So, is the QOTD copyrighted, patented or a trade secret? If it's patented, I can show prior art. (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dbaxo/quote.htm) If it's a trade secret, the beans were spilled in the 1920's. If it's copyright,
Besides, I've been using that sig since before there was a slashdot!
Insolent puppy. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
IANL, but I play one in the shadowbox show in my head.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
I'd say you can forget aboult life on IO with that kind of volatility in the geology.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
What was it you wanted me to be careful about there? 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Regarding ownership of software, RMS writes:
Now, by implication, doesn't this make anyone who asserts proprietary rights to software an "ethical polluter?" Stallman is poisoning the rhetorical well by adopting a moral position that defines his opponents as unethical polluters. Jerry Falwell could learn a thing or two. Now, it's true that this is a far cry from Meyer's shaking his finger at esr's gun politics and crying "shame!"
In any event, I didn't compare Meyer to Stallman so much as Meyer to Meyer's idea of Stallman.. The joke is that Meyer outdoes his own strawman!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Interesting article. Meyer points out some glaring problems with the extreme views of many in the free software camp. I found his own glaring problems pretty amusing however. He accuses Richard Stallman et.al. of blanket ad hominum attacks against purveyors of proprietary software, then goes on to his own personal attack on esr:
This is followed by a blistering political attack on "gun nuts", a position I happen to agree with, but was embarrased to see put forward with such venom and vitrol. Bertrand Meyer seems to ignore his own lofty statement earlier in the article that Not that I necessarily agree that esr is a bad person. I do think that the connection between his ideas on guns and hos ideas on open source software was not well established by Mr. Meyer's article. In the absence of such a clear connection, this section of the article can only viewed as an example of the smear tactics Meyer accuses Stallman et al of engaging in.
Some of Meyer's other criticisms hit closer to the mark in my opinion. The idea that anyone who engages in the production of proprietary software is evil is ludicrous and detracts from the effectiveness of free software evangelism. Fortunately, the world is not made up of black-and-white opposites as both Richard Stallman and Bertrand Meyer seem to think. These two stand near opposite poles of a continuous, complicated field of belief and practise. Software developers are free to choose from a variety of open source licenses for their wares, or to sell their time to commercial concerns. Many select several items from the menu presented, to the betterment of themselves, and yes, to the world in general.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Well, that's the conspiricy theory in a nutshell. The fact that Samba team members signed the original posting that made it clear they had at least read the EULA makes it that much more plausable,
Like most conspiricy theories, this one gathers seemingly contradictory facts together in a framework that seems to resolve the contradictions. The punchline of this theory is that Microsoft has devised a fiendishly clever plan to legally sabotage one of the leading open source projects in order to ensure the hegemony of Windows. It goes without saying that this coda plays well with the
Over the past several days I've had a chance to read more about this melodrama and think a bit about what I've read. One thing in particular bothers me about the tidy theory of Microsoft's evil machinations. As a earlier comment in this thread points out, Microsoft is not assured of prevailing in any court case that might result from this brouhaha. This would surely have occured to a nameless evil redmondian puppet master smart enough to predict the reaction to the "release" of the Kerberos extensions. What's at stake for Microsoft if it loses a court case over this issue? Control of the Kerberos extensions that the whole conspiricy was supposed to ensure.
On the other hand, the comments of nice Microsoft employee #1 and nice Microsoft employee #2 ring true with my experience of large organizations. They tend to work at cross-purposes and to speak with more than one voice. Now, I am not a Microsoft lackey, and I personally hope the antitrust case gets fast-tracked to the Supreme Court where every iota of the USDOJ's proposed remedies gets implemented. Nonetheless, I now think something like the following scenario may be closer to the truth:
Both theories are speculative, and ultimatly irrelevant to
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
How's this for a conspiricy theory?
Microsoft widely distributes their Kerberos subverting extensions in a manner that preserves their rights to protection under trade secret law. Predictibly, someoneposts the whole spec to slashdot.
Now let's say someone else reverse engineers their crud. Someone from the Samba project, say. Microsoft hits them with a lawsuit claiming violation of trade secrets. When the respondent claims reverse engineering, Microsoft can point out that those dastards at slashdot spread the spec all over the Internet. They can also prove that someone on the Samba project at least read the license.
Of course, Microsoft might give Samba a royalty free license if they were asked nicely.
Right.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
The other problem I have with Jon Katz's article is the logical cul-de-sac he seems to want to force us with the seemingly inconsistent traffic signs of "victimized innocents" on the one hand and Orwellian mind control (in the form of self censorship through moderation) on the other: So "hate speech" is an "assault" on innocent victims and moderation of the sort practised here leads to bland homogeneity free from disturbing and/or challenging opinions. What's left for us to do? The answer, I suspect, appears earlier in the article: Yes, it would probably be satisfactory to Katz to have a model that involved active censorship. How you do this when you also provide real anonimity to your posters is an open question.
I get the impression that Jon Katz may not trust this community to police itself. This is understandable when you take into account the fact that he's not actually a member of the Slashdot community, as others have noted.
I've enjoyed most of what I've read of Jon Katz's previous writings, both here and on HotWired. This is the first time I've felt excercised enough to respond to something he's written. Thanks for the foil, Jon!
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
I guess that's 3 cents now. 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
*sigh* I have a long-standing suspicion that the root cause for the issuance of many of these silly patents is the inability of patent examiners to grasp what is "obvious" to a programmer. Say it's 1989 and you have to write some code that will import and export accounting data to a 3090 mainframe that uses two-digit dates. With a century rollover coming in 11 years, how do you tell what century the data were generated in? The "obvious" solution to a programmer would be to choose some reasonable cut-off two digit date, say 50, and treat all years before that as belonging to the next century. If you were dealing with personnel records with birthdates, 10 might be more appropriate. In any event, that's windowing and it's an obvious patch on the Y2K problem.
Now, if the PTO could only see how obvious "one click" was, the world would be a better place! 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
I have sent the following email to the contact addresses listed on the Leonardo Finance web site:
I urge you to abandon your shortsighted persecution of Association Leonardo. The kindest light in which your actions could be viewed would be to suppose that you undertook your lawsuit out of ignorance of the true nature of the organization you were attacking. Surely entrepreneurial energy is not incompatible with art and art scholarship? How on Earth can your reconcile the vicious legal attack you have launched on a prestigious academic arts organization with values you claim for yourself on your web site? To the above excerpt from your web site should be added the following qualifying statement:
Your attempts to stifle artistic freedom are bound to fail in any civilized court of law. In the meantime, you are doing irreparable harm to your reputation. Please reconsider your ill-advised actions in this matter.
Sincerely,
Howard Owen
hbo@egbok.com
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
That first sentence you quote, together with the following sentence are actually rather crafty:
The partition types used by the Linux and Windows operating systems are incompatible. To remove Linux from your computer and install Windows 2000 or Windows NT, you must manually delete the partition used by the Linux operating system.
Without any context or Linux knowledge, this seems to imply that Linux and Win2K can't reside on the same machine. It's a perfectly deniable implication. If you parse the second sentence fully, it doesn't actually say that. But I find it difficult to believe that the masters of FUD didn't intend it to confuse customers.
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
Honestly, this is a little embarassing for Microsoft, but on the other hand it shows a certain willingness to use what works well. On the other hand, it wouldn't be good PR if the number one free email site fell apart over a conversion to Win2K.
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting