>Nope, kern.maxproc is really read-only in a >running system even in securelevel -1. You have >to set it in/boot/loader.conf (which doesn't >seem to be prominently documented anywhere, so >not finding it is nothing to blame fefe for).
It is something to blame him for. He should have asked the advice of someone familiar with the project. Just because it is not in the documentation is no reason to ask support. Especially in a case like this which is a high profile comparison between well known O/S's.
Forgive my ignorance then; so 2.6 is not stable; that even further supports my assertion that the tests are between non-stable versions: it may just happen that 2.6 linux is not only good, but also more stable than the BSD's.
I still think the results here are useful, in that they provide some general guidelines, but I would be very wary about some of these exceptional problems the tester ran into, because those problems (e.g. the mmap under OpenBSD) could easily be attributed to instability due to current renovation in the kernel, or environmental conditions in the testers setup.
The problemn is that the tester does no investigation to determine the root cause of these problems, but simply presents the comparisons to provide an unfair picture of comparing apples and oranges. To me, it seems as though the tester was more interested in expediency rather than correctness.
What would be fairer:
1. ask the project / core leads of each of these releases what version of the O/S they would recommend for testing;
2. more methodical tests to determine that when some very anomalous case occurs (e.g. OpenBSD mmap) what the root cause is, and to go back to the project / core leads and tell them this, because it could easily turn out to be something about the testing install or environment;
I sure hope this guy doesn't come and work at my company and end up comparing my project to others - I'd very pissed off at his methodology.
Your scientific method isn't one, and these results are invalid as a result.
You took in-progress development release of OpenBSD compared to stable releases of other operating systems (even your NetBSD was a RELEASE rather than a CURRENT). CURRENT is always going to be an in progress development and not entirely stable.
Excuse me, but as there is no comparison between these results and non-OSS, how can you make that claim about superiority of OSS ? Sounds like you just needed a good excuse to blow the horn.
>Update (2003/10/07) >The UK's implementation of the European Union >Copyright Directive means that, starting from >October 31st, it will no longer be legal to use >or distribute Convert LIT in the UK.
The fact is that the copyright directive had an implementation deadline at the end of last year. The UK has just been 10 months late. However, legal precedence in the EU means that until a state has implemented the directive, then it is possible to enforce the directive through the principle of "direct effect".
This means that your material is already - and has been for some time - a copyright violation.
Spam has always been annoying - have been used to it. However, in the last few months, it seems to have become dramatically worse with the addition of viral fraudulent Microsoft patch emails.
My personal email account (that I have had for many years, and use for email list and online order / subscriptions / etc) is now averaging 80-100 items of mail a day - of which only ~10 are legitimate. This is simply outrageous.
Our IT department has spam blocking - it is killing real email too.
We have two stages of pre-deployment labs testing.
Firstly, our product (mission critical teleco product) first passes our own internal QA labs stress and functional testing. It's quite common to find race conditions here. We use our own internal data sets, but also a large scale customer database.
Secondly, a few of our customers (the smart ones) have their own validation labs for proofing before they'll take the release into a production environment. They'll subject a release to a couple of weeks intensive regression / data testing - a few issues often come out of this for us to fix. Then it goes into production.
Some customers actually run multiple installations of our product, so will trial a new release in parallel (or in part of) the current release.
I'm guessing FreeBSD is looking for the latter two.
Most smart customers are wise enough to not take a new release straight into production.
It is too early; the technology has in no way come about nor settled. There was no bubble to even burst. It'll be a few more years before the right technologies get into place (e.g. displayable ink).
Same problem occurred with virtual reality. It's possible to create VR systems, but everything about them is too immature (price, performance, bandwidth for multi-site, economics, etc). Again, there was no bubble - just an early stage technology.
Depending upon the course, you have to consider the benefits of social interaction. For example, debating with other students or the teachers, or interacting in tutorials, or practicals (for science/engineering), or networking (e.g. if you are a mid-career professional taking a more management style course, then part of the experience is to meet others with similar backgrounds/experiences - not only is this rewarding just to share the experiences and learn from others, but it can be good networking for career purposes, and good way to get visibility for yourself). I am aware of people that have built relationships between the university and their organisation as part of such study.
I've obtained three qualifications part-time. I've found that employers have considered me to have a more mature approach, and value that I've been willing to balance work and life. They see this as a sign of a person with greater responsibility and time management skills -- irrespective of whether the course was online or not. Make sure you emphasise this point.
For your employer, the point is not whether you obtained your qualification part time or online. the point is: (a) did you gain relevant and useful skills (e.g. if you were taking a management MBA online, you may be looked down upon because you obtained quantitative skills, but no networking); (b) was the course half-way decent, irrespective of whether online or not;
The Series 5/5mx (as an evolution from the Series 3) was a good product.
The Revo was basically a "funky" and slightly cut-down version of the 5/5mx; that came out sometime after the 5mx, and just before the Series 7. I have had no experience with it, but I could see where they were aiming it. Unfortunately their target market probably wasn't big enough, didn't need the keyboard, and was happy with the functionality offered by mobile phones (which were becoming more sophisticated at this time). The Revo loses out to Palm's and mobile phones in my opinion.
The Series 7 was an attempt to get into a market that doesn't seem to have much momentum - somewhere between a PDA and a PC notebook -- i.e. a slightly dumbed down PC notebook. I see the potential, but I don't see the reality. Time will tell if a market segment opens up here (e.g. providing students with notebooks for school/university: the MTBF/cost/complexity/reliability of a standard PC style notebook may be considered a bit of an overkill, so this segment may provide a good price point). I see the Series 7 as also trying to be part of "the tablet pc" market. I know that in our household, despite the need for high end notebooks for work / etc; we use one of our old notebooks as a "dumb webterminal" - the Series 7 or a tablet PC would be the kind of off the shelf product that we'd consider if we had to pay for this sort of functionality.
It is a shame to lose Psion consumer products. They produced good products. I feel that they were distinct enough from other organisers as well.
I second that; I have used a Psion 5 (not mx, unfortunately) to take notes for two postgraduate qualifications (the second one, a masters, I am completing at the moment).
It's the perfect tool for students and this purpose: - inexpensive (relatively) at only 200-300 pounds; - runs off standard AA batteries for a reasonable amount of time, or you could use nimh rechargable AA's (I do); - has a workable keyboard you can actually type on in class; - has a touch screen, so you can draw images into your documents; - small and compact, fits into an A5 sized padded case for me (same padded case carries a few pens, spare batteries and other items) - means you don't look like a complete idiot down the pub lugging around a notebook case; - has all the built in organiser, spreadsheet, database, events calendar, etc you need to organise student life/activities; - has a connectivity suite, so you can connect to the internet, use it with email, etc (the 5 is too slow IMHO, but 5mx better); - use it with CF cards for extra storage, read documents offline; - there's a lot of freeware and shareware; - IrDA means you can use (I do) it with your mobile for data / SMS / phonebook / etc;
The difference is that a Palm is designed to be a personal organiser. The Psion is designed to be a personal computer.
It's very sad to have lost the 5/5mx; the overall design is of a high quality and standard.
The only thing I wish my Psion 5 had was bluetooth (apart from wishing that it was a 5mx for the additional speed).
The issue isn't with the programming language _per se_. Obviously some programming languages are more dangerous then others. Obviously some programmers are worse than others.
The issue is with secure and contained execution environments. Properly "jailing" software (whether a process in an operating system, or a thread and window box on a preview pane in Outlook) is the real answer. Engineering has long known that compartmentalisation is key to minimising risk and impact. Operating systems are getting better at doing it. Programming languages are gradually working towards it.
You can have all of the aforementioned and current problems with buffer overflows, language defects, etc: but if the impact is limited (say, to a display pane in Outlook) then the worst that can happen is psychological damage, nothing more. From one point of view, the preview pane should only be doing that: showing me a preview - it shouldn't be granting access to resources around it.
I think that one of the key technologies that Java brought to the computing landscape was the concept of a secure machine (JVM) for a programming language (at a lower granuality than for a monolithic operating system). Argue as much as you like about how succesfull this was (I do remember much debate and technical attention given to it in the early days of Java), but the concept is far more important than the incremental language innovations in Java (i.e. a next-generation SmallTalk or C++).
Give the guy some credit - he's done some very useful technical work - and Java will be one of the technologies in the timeline of the development of computer history. Even if Java itself wasn't succesfull, it's been an interesting experiment and a lot of learning has come out of it.
I recommend this paper as a good read on the bus, just so you can appreciate the technical innovations surrounding the language.
http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_09/column3 ps. It's obvious he's still pulling the Sun line, but what do you expect ? He put a lot of effort and passion into Sun's technical direction - only a fool would think he's going to drop that overnight.
This has nothing to do with website monitoring per se, but it's an issue of commercial confidentiality. It's like outsourcing a mailing list to third party company to find that the third party steals the list and uses it contrary to the agreement. You should - if you can prove it - bring an action against them for violation of confidentiality - I think you would have a strong case. As a customer, I've had this happen to me in the past (where it seemed like someone inside a larger company had sold off an internal mailing list/data to a third party).
Naturally, none of this applies if they simply walked your address space - I think they could do that legitimtaetly.
15 years since the RTM worm
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 1
Set your calendar to remind you that 4 November will mark 15 years to the day since the 1988 RTM worm. Lets hope that this (or a) virus/worm writer is not preparating for a "celebration".
I own an OpenBSD box connected via ADSL to a UK provider. I set up an ipv6 tunnel and so far:
- experimented with local windows/openbsd configurations to use ipv6;
- experimented with pf rules / openbsd tools to use ipv6;
- looked around at ipv6 native providers, tools and so on;
There seem to be few killer apps, but more of a noddy "just experimenting to see that it's there".
I too would like to find some reason to use IPv6, but the reality is that it's transparent to the user (as a network layer protocol), and so the enhancements (over ipv4) are more apparent at lower levels of the protocol stack and for network providers. Don't expect to see much to change unless you regularity play with routing, dns, netstat, host configs, etc.
localhost# ping6 www.kame.net
PING6(56=40+8+8 bytes) 2001:618:400::XXX:XXX --> 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085
16 bytes from 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085, icmp_seq=0 hlim=57 time=311.902 ms
16 bytes from 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085, icmp_seq=1 hlim=57 time=307.713 ms
You should have clarified this with your line manager or the company before you went ahead with submitting the claim for the goods. This would have saved your heartache.
I think - unfortunately for you - the company owns the property. In general, the company can be said to own gifts and other items that are related to your activities in the course of business, but most of the time you're allowed to keep them for yourself (I'm thinking of christmas gifts, etc) in so far as it doesn't look like it's cause competition issues (e.g. favouring suppliers that offer free gifts over ones that provide the best deal for the company) or other issues (e.g. bad will between coworkers because some of them are extracting additional fringe benefits).
that there is no "one language", there are multiple languages for multiple purposes, and the boundaries between languages are often blurred (just like everything else in life).
in addition to making your case (as stated by other poster), also - what particular context/problem are you trying to solve; - what are the specific characteristics and issues in that context/problem; - how does your new language provide a better solution than other solutions; - how does your new language stand up on theoretical issues (looking at the science of design of languages themselves)
if there's an existing well used language that is "close" to what you want, and such language has quite a following/momentum, then can you try to adapt/evolve it rather than creating a dud language that goes nowhere (a waste of time for everyone). do you really need a new language, or do you need to help educate on the use of an existing language (i.e. are you more about process than product).
(1) read the license agreement that comes with the development tool in question, check what the terms are regarding this sort of code. if you don't like those terms, goto the next tool.
(2) have accepted the license agreement (say, in 1), then also check to see whether either party is allowed to vary the terms of the agreement - i.e. is there a provision that allows for the terms to be altered without explicit agreement between the parties ? if there are problems here, go back to (1) above. if you choose to accept these sort of provisions, then you've chosen to accept the consequences. no manufacturer would exert such arbitrary provision because no development house would ever buy such a tool, it's simply not commercially viable.
(3) now that you've agreed to the terms, you've entered a contract, and unless the provisions say otherwise, the contract is "fixed", and can only be altered by agreement between the parties (well, there are a few other issues, but not worth mentioning here).
The real solution would be for the open source community to come half way, and the manufacturers to come the other half way and meet in the middle. Rather than rely on tight fisted manufacturers to develop device drivers for in-flux operating systems (e.g. Linux, or other open source variants), why not create a standard for "binary compatible device drivers", involving implemenetation wrappers for BSD, Linux, Windows, etc. Convince the manufacturers to develop _one_ "binary compatible" i386 device driver, and then it will work on Windows, BSD, Linux or whatever your favourite operating system is. This would be the ideal solution because it would also be forwards compatible to future versions of OS and so on. The basis of most drivers (PCI, USB, PCMCIA/PCCARD, etc) is a standard, as is the platform (intel), so why not some standard approach to drivers ?
Prior to 1989 it was necessary to register a work in the United States in order to gain copyright protection for the work. This was the case despite the fact that the US had been a signatory to the Berne Convention for some 100 years, and the Berne Convention stated that qualifying works should automatically gain copyright protection (if they satisfy the qualifying criteria - originality, ownership, etc). For some 100 years, the US did not amend its copyright law to comply with the Berne Convention - this was a bone of contention for copyright holders. Effectively, it favours the more economically mighty (i.e. the time/cost required for registration) rather than the individual or those with less resources.
In 1989 the US amended its copyright law so that registration was not necessary to gain copyright protection. However, in disputes before the court over copyright, registration holds very strong weight in determining originality of a work, so it is usually advised that works should continue to be registered for this purpose, though it is likely that over time this will not be important as in the rest of the world, registration is not required.
The above may be slightly off - but I have recently (in europe) taken a class on copyright law, and we were informed of this when looking at international aspects of copyright law.
There is a lot of potential in the old C64. In the media industry, IPR libraries (of movies, sounds, etc) are large assets that can be reused and reinvented (new media e.g. DVD, anniversary releases, etc). The gaming industry hasn't moved onto this level of sophistication, yet it could be very profitable. With the popularity of mobile phones and mobile gaming, there seems to be a huge possibility for reusing thse old games into a new medium, and if someone could ASIC and entire C64 (after all, it was only 1Mhz) and embed it into a PDA, or as a mobile phone "accessory", with online library of games - I think a lot of money would be in the bank.
In a copyright case, the courts first establish whether infringement has taken place, and this is determined irrespective of economic issues. It is determined purely on issues of subsistance, owernship, duration, etc - in terms of the statuory provisions and the existing case law. It is only then that exceptions (such as fair use, and specific exemptions - say - for public archives and libraries) are considered.
Then, finally, when remedies are considered (e.g. damages), the economic harm is taken into account. No damages may be awarded if there is no economic harm, but you still have the right to prevent the party from using an infringing copy of your work.
This is because copyright is a right on the work conferred to you. You can choose how you exercise that right, and that may include you refusing to allow others to use your work even in situations where it does no economic or moral harm to you (I mean, basically, you have the right and you can do damn well what you like with it!). There are of course some "essential facility" copyright cases where courts have ruled that an owner must license or allow use of a work, but these do not come along often (e.g. the macgill case in the EU).
You can argue that this is not a good way to do it, but the facts are that this is how it works now, and in terms of new technologies such as the Internet, it is not likely to chance immediately.
There are limited provisions in copyright law (at least in the UK, and I expect to occur elsewhere in the world) for public libraries and archives. But these are indeed limited provisions and do not apply to a random commercial organisation that decides to provide such a service.
Firstly, in the general case of search engines providing indexing of content, this is legal and there are legal cases to back it up (in the UK: antiquesportfolio) so long as the indexes are not copies.
Secondly, in the case of USENET groups and mailing lists, then in the process of submitting a message to the mailing list or group, you have given an implicit license for the message to be reproduced within the nature of the particular technology at hand. This means if at a later date you object to a message in a mailing list that you wrote in the past, you don't really have the ability to retract it. In all cases, anyone deciding to use the material in another way (e.g. creating a commercial CDROM of USENET material for a marked up price) would be violating your (and others) copyright. However, if they were providing that CDROM as a distribution service for USENET itself (e.g. "get your monthly USENET CDROM") then this is probably within the bounds of legality as it is still transfer via the USENET system, and the cost is likely to be that to reflect media/distribution costs rather than some specific aim to make a commercial product out of your material.
Finally, in the specific case of copies of websites, yes this is a violation of copyright - but as far as I know this has not been tested in a court of law. The use of the Robots Exclusion Protocol and the NOARCHIVE, NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW elements allow a weasal argument suggesting that it is inherent in the WWW itself (as a new form of media / technology) that search engine indexing and archiving / caching is legal unless you specifically disallow it with this mechanism. It may also be the case that if this archiving / caching was carried out for profit or at price greater than fair for distribution/media then a party is making an economic gain out of your material and this suggests an inequitable violation of your economic rights.
Another point to remember is that in WTO treaties that resulted in DMCA provisions, as enacted in the UK and EU, there are specific fair use allowances for intermediate copies of a copyright work as necessary for the telecommunications medium itself (this would seem to allow things like store-and-forward systems, and caching).
Slashdot Mirror
>Nope, kern.maxproc is really read-only in a /boot/loader.conf (which doesn't
>running system even in securelevel -1. You have
>to set it in
>seem to be prominently documented anywhere, so >not finding it is nothing to blame fefe for).
It is something to blame him for. He should have asked the advice of someone familiar with the project. Just because it is not in the documentation is no reason to ask support. Especially in a case like this which is a high profile comparison between well known O/S's.
Forgive my ignorance then; so 2.6 is not stable; that even further supports my assertion that the tests are between non-stable versions: it may just happen that 2.6 linux is not only good, but also more stable than the BSD's.
I still think the results here are useful, in that they provide some general guidelines, but I would be very wary about some of these exceptional problems the tester ran into, because those problems (e.g. the mmap under OpenBSD) could easily be attributed to instability due to current renovation in the kernel, or environmental conditions in the testers setup.
The problemn is that the tester does no investigation to determine the root cause of these problems, but simply presents the comparisons to provide an unfair picture of comparing apples and oranges. To me, it seems as though the tester was more interested in expediency rather than correctness.
What would be fairer:
1. ask the project / core leads of each of these releases what version of the O/S they would recommend for testing;
2. more methodical tests to determine that when some very anomalous case occurs (e.g. OpenBSD mmap) what the root cause is, and to go back to the project / core leads and tell them this, because it could easily turn out to be something about the testing install or environment;
I sure hope this guy doesn't come and work at my company and end up comparing my project to others - I'd very pissed off at his methodology.
Your scientific method isn't one, and these results are invalid as a result.
You took in-progress development release of OpenBSD compared to stable releases of other operating systems (even your NetBSD was a RELEASE rather than a CURRENT). CURRENT is always going to be an in progress development and not entirely stable.
Excuse me, but as there is no comparison between these results and non-OSS, how can you make that claim about superiority of OSS ? Sounds like you just needed a good excuse to blow the horn.
You say:
>Update (2003/10/07)
>The UK's implementation of the European Union
>Copyright Directive means that, starting from
>October 31st, it will no longer be legal to use
>or distribute Convert LIT in the UK.
The fact is that the copyright directive had an implementation deadline at the end of last year. The UK has just been 10 months late. However, legal precedence in the EU means that until a state has implemented the directive, then it is possible to enforce the directive through the principle of "direct effect".
This means that your material is already - and has been for some time - a copyright violation.
Spam has always been annoying - have been used to it. However, in the last few months, it seems to have become dramatically worse with the addition of viral fraudulent Microsoft patch emails.
My personal email account (that I have had for many years, and use for email list and online order / subscriptions / etc) is now averaging 80-100 items of mail a day - of which only ~10 are legitimate. This is simply outrageous.
Our IT department has spam blocking - it is killing real email too.
We have two stages of pre-deployment labs testing.
Firstly, our product (mission critical teleco product) first passes our own internal QA labs stress and functional testing. It's quite common to find race conditions here. We use our own internal data sets, but also a large scale customer database.
Secondly, a few of our customers (the smart ones) have their own validation labs for proofing before they'll take the release into a production environment. They'll subject a release to a couple of weeks intensive regression / data testing - a few issues often come out of this for us to fix. Then it goes into production.
Some customers actually run multiple installations of our product, so will trial a new release in parallel (or in part of) the current release.
I'm guessing FreeBSD is looking for the latter two.
Most smart customers are wise enough to not take a new release straight into production.
It is too early; the technology has in no way come about nor settled. There was no bubble to even burst. It'll be a few more years before the right technologies get into place (e.g. displayable ink).
Same problem occurred with virtual reality. It's possible to create VR systems, but everything about them is too immature (price, performance, bandwidth for multi-site, economics, etc). Again, there was no bubble - just an early stage technology.
Shouldn't someone be maintaining a consensus list of items to be worked on - like a master feature list.
Depending upon the course, you have to consider the benefits of social interaction. For example, debating with other students or the teachers, or interacting in tutorials, or practicals (for science/engineering), or networking (e.g. if you are a mid-career professional taking a more management style course, then part of the experience is to meet others with similar backgrounds/experiences - not only is this rewarding just to share the experiences and learn from others, but it can be good networking for career purposes, and good way to get visibility for yourself). I am aware of people that have built relationships between the university and their organisation as part of such study.
I've obtained three qualifications part-time. I've found that employers have considered me to have a more mature approach, and value that I've been willing to balance work and life. They see this as a sign of a person with greater responsibility and time management skills -- irrespective of whether the course was online or not. Make sure you emphasise this point.
For your employer, the point is not whether you obtained your qualification part time or online. the point is:
(a) did you gain relevant and useful skills (e.g. if you were taking a management MBA online, you may be looked down upon because you obtained quantitative skills, but no networking);
(b) was the course half-way decent, irrespective of whether online or not;
I agree.
The Series 5/5mx (as an evolution from the Series 3) was a good product.
The Revo was basically a "funky" and slightly cut-down version of the 5/5mx; that came out sometime after the 5mx, and just before the Series 7. I have had no experience with it, but I could see where they were aiming it. Unfortunately their target market probably wasn't big enough, didn't need the keyboard, and was happy with the functionality offered by mobile phones (which were becoming more sophisticated at this time). The Revo loses out to Palm's and mobile phones in my opinion.
The Series 7 was an attempt to get into a market that doesn't seem to have much momentum - somewhere between a PDA and a PC notebook -- i.e. a slightly dumbed down PC notebook. I see the potential, but I don't see the reality. Time will tell if a market segment opens up here (e.g. providing students with notebooks for school/university: the MTBF/cost/complexity/reliability of a standard PC style notebook may be considered a bit of an overkill, so this segment may provide a good price point). I see the Series 7 as also trying to be part of "the tablet pc" market. I know that in our household, despite the need for high end notebooks for work / etc; we use one of our old notebooks as a "dumb webterminal" - the Series 7 or a tablet PC would be the kind of off the shelf product that we'd consider if we had to pay for this sort of functionality.
It is a shame to lose Psion consumer products. They produced good products. I feel that they were distinct enough from other organisers as well.
I second that; I have used a Psion 5 (not mx, unfortunately) to take notes for two postgraduate qualifications (the second one, a masters, I am completing at the moment).
It's the perfect tool for students and this purpose:
- inexpensive (relatively) at only 200-300 pounds;
- runs off standard AA batteries for a reasonable amount of time, or you could use nimh rechargable AA's (I do);
- has a workable keyboard you can actually type on in class;
- has a touch screen, so you can draw images into your documents;
- small and compact, fits into an A5 sized padded case for me (same padded case carries a few pens, spare batteries and other items) - means you don't look like a complete idiot down the pub lugging around a notebook case;
- has all the built in organiser, spreadsheet, database, events calendar, etc you need to organise student life
- has a connectivity suite, so you can connect to the internet, use it with email, etc (the 5 is too slow IMHO, but 5mx better);
- use it with CF cards for extra storage, read documents offline;
- there's a lot of freeware and shareware;
- IrDA means you can use (I do) it with your mobile for data / SMS / phonebook / etc;
The difference is that a Palm is designed to be a personal organiser. The Psion is designed to be a personal computer.
It's very sad to have lost the 5/5mx; the overall design is of a high quality and standard.
The only thing I wish my Psion 5 had was bluetooth (apart from wishing that it was a 5mx for the additional speed).
You're wrong as well.
The issue isn't with the programming language _per se_. Obviously some programming languages are more dangerous then others. Obviously some programmers are worse than others.
The issue is with secure and contained execution environments. Properly "jailing" software (whether a process in an operating system, or a thread and window box on a preview pane in Outlook) is the real answer. Engineering has long known that compartmentalisation is key to minimising risk and impact. Operating systems are getting better at doing it. Programming languages are gradually working towards it.
You can have all of the aforementioned and current problems with buffer overflows, language defects, etc: but if the impact is limited (say, to a display pane in Outlook) then the worst that can happen is psychological damage, nothing more. From one point of view, the preview pane should only be doing that: showing me a preview - it shouldn't be granting access to resources around it.
I think that one of the key technologies that Java brought to the computing landscape was the concept of a secure machine (JVM) for a programming language (at a lower granuality than for a monolithic operating system). Argue as much as you like about how succesfull this was (I do remember much debate and technical attention given to it in the early days of Java), but the concept is far more important than the incremental language innovations in Java (i.e. a next-generation SmallTalk or C++).
Give the guy some credit - he's done some very useful technical work - and Java will be one of the technologies in the timeline of the development of computer history. Even if Java itself wasn't succesfull, it's been an interesting experiment and a lot of learning has come out of it.
I recommend this paper as a good read on the bus, just so you can appreciate the technical innovations surrounding the language.
http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_09/column3
ps. It's obvious he's still pulling the Sun line, but what do you expect ? He put a lot of effort and passion into Sun's technical direction - only a fool would think he's going to drop that overnight.
This has nothing to do with website monitoring per se, but it's an issue of commercial confidentiality. It's like outsourcing a mailing list to third party company to find that the third party steals the list and uses it contrary to the agreement. You should - if you can prove it - bring an action against them for violation of confidentiality - I think you would have a strong case. As a customer, I've had this happen to me in the past (where it seemed like someone inside a larger company had sold off an internal mailing list /data to a third party).
Naturally, none of this applies if they simply walked your address space - I think they could do that legitimtaetly.
Set your calendar to remind you that 4 November will mark 15 years to the day since the 1988 RTM worm. Lets hope that this (or a) virus/worm writer is not preparating for a "celebration".
From an engineering point of view, it depends upon your requirements, but for public access internet providers, lowish latency is important.
We use the term "bandwidth delay product" rather than "bandwidth" as this refects the combination of speed and latency.
I own an OpenBSD box connected via ADSL to a UK provider. I set up an ipv6 tunnel and so far: - experimented with local windows/openbsd configurations to use ipv6; - experimented with pf rules / openbsd tools to use ipv6; - looked around at ipv6 native providers, tools and so on; There seem to be few killer apps, but more of a noddy "just experimenting to see that it's there". I too would like to find some reason to use IPv6, but the reality is that it's transparent to the user (as a network layer protocol), and so the enhancements (over ipv4) are more apparent at lower levels of the protocol stack and for network providers. Don't expect to see much to change unless you regularity play with routing, dns, netstat, host configs, etc. localhost# ping6 www.kame.net PING6(56=40+8+8 bytes) 2001:618:400::XXX:XXX --> 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085 16 bytes from 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085, icmp_seq=0 hlim=57 time=311.902 ms 16 bytes from 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085, icmp_seq=1 hlim=57 time=307.713 ms
You should have clarified this with your line manager or the company before you went ahead with submitting the claim for the goods. This would have saved your heartache.
I think - unfortunately for you - the company owns the property. In general, the company can be said to own gifts and other items that are related to your activities in the course of business, but most of the time you're allowed to keep them for yourself (I'm thinking of christmas gifts, etc) in so far as it doesn't look like it's cause competition issues (e.g. favouring suppliers that offer free gifts over ones that provide the best deal for the company) or other issues (e.g. bad will between coworkers because some of them are extracting additional fringe benefits).
You just have to be careful about these things.
that there is no "one language", there are multiple languages for multiple purposes, and the boundaries between languages are often blurred (just like everything else in life).
in addition to making your case (as stated by other poster), also
- what particular context/problem are you trying to solve;
- what are the specific characteristics and issues in that context/problem;
- how does your new language provide a better solution than other solutions;
- how does your new language stand up on theoretical issues (looking at the science of design of languages themselves)
if there's an existing well used language that is "close" to what you want, and such language has quite a following/momentum, then can you try to adapt/evolve it rather than creating a dud language that goes nowhere (a waste of time for everyone). do you really need a new language, or do you need to help educate on the use of an existing language (i.e. are you more about process than product).
this is entirely a contract law problem
(1) read the license agreement that comes with the development tool in question, check what the terms are regarding this sort of code. if you don't like those terms, goto the next tool.
(2) have accepted the license agreement (say, in 1), then also check to see whether either party is allowed to vary the terms of the agreement - i.e. is there a provision that allows for the terms to be altered without explicit agreement between the parties ? if there are problems here, go back to (1) above. if you choose to accept these sort of provisions, then you've chosen to accept the consequences. no manufacturer would exert such arbitrary provision because no development house would ever buy such a tool, it's simply not commercially viable.
(3) now that you've agreed to the terms, you've entered a contract, and unless the provisions say otherwise, the contract is "fixed", and can only be altered by agreement between the parties (well, there are a few other issues, but not worth mentioning here).
The real solution would be for the open source community to come half way, and the manufacturers to come the other half way and meet in the middle. Rather than rely on tight fisted manufacturers to develop device drivers for in-flux operating systems (e.g. Linux, or other open source variants), why not create a standard for "binary compatible device drivers", involving implemenetation wrappers for BSD, Linux, Windows, etc. Convince the manufacturers to develop _one_ "binary compatible" i386 device driver, and then it will work on Windows, BSD, Linux or whatever your favourite operating system is. This would be the ideal solution because it would also be forwards compatible to future versions of OS and so on. The basis of most drivers (PCI, USB, PCMCIA/PCCARD, etc) is a standard, as is the platform (intel), so why not some standard approach to drivers ?
Prior to 1989 it was necessary to register a work in the United States in order to gain copyright protection for the work. This was the case despite the fact that the US had been a signatory to the Berne Convention for some 100 years, and the Berne Convention stated that qualifying works should automatically gain copyright protection (if they satisfy the qualifying criteria - originality, ownership, etc). For some 100 years, the US did not amend its copyright law to comply with the Berne Convention - this was a bone of contention for copyright holders. Effectively, it favours the more economically mighty (i.e. the time/cost required for registration) rather than the individual or those with less resources.
In 1989 the US amended its copyright law so that registration was not necessary to gain copyright protection. However, in disputes before the court over copyright, registration holds very strong weight in determining originality of a work, so it is usually advised that works should continue to be registered for this purpose, though it is likely that over time this will not be important as in the rest of the world, registration is not required.
The above may be slightly off - but I have recently (in europe) taken a class on copyright law, and we were informed of this when looking at international aspects of copyright law.
There is a lot of potential in the old C64. In the media industry, IPR libraries (of movies, sounds, etc) are large assets that can be reused and reinvented (new media e.g. DVD, anniversary releases, etc). The gaming industry hasn't moved onto this level of sophistication, yet it could be very profitable. With the popularity of mobile phones and mobile gaming, there seems to be a huge possibility for reusing thse old games into a new medium, and if someone could ASIC and entire C64 (after all, it was only 1Mhz) and embed it into a PDA, or as a mobile phone "accessory", with online library of games - I think a lot of money would be in the bank.
You don't properly understand the legal process.
In a copyright case, the courts first establish whether infringement has taken place, and this is determined irrespective of economic issues. It is determined purely on issues of subsistance, owernship, duration, etc - in terms of the statuory provisions and the existing case law. It is only then that exceptions (such as fair use, and specific exemptions - say - for public archives and libraries) are considered.
Then, finally, when remedies are considered (e.g. damages), the economic harm is taken into account. No damages may be awarded if there is no economic harm, but you still have the right to prevent the party from using an infringing copy of your work.
This is because copyright is a right on the work conferred to you. You can choose how you exercise that right, and that may include you refusing to allow others to use your work even in situations where it does no economic or moral harm to you (I mean, basically, you have the right and you can do damn well what you like with it!). There are of course some "essential facility" copyright cases where courts have ruled that an owner must license or allow use of a work, but these do not come along often (e.g. the macgill case in the EU).
You can argue that this is not a good way to do it, but the facts are that this is how it works now, and in terms of new technologies such as the Internet, it is not likely to chance immediately.
There are limited provisions in copyright law (at least in the UK, and I expect to occur elsewhere in the world) for public libraries and archives. But these are indeed limited provisions and do not apply to a random commercial organisation that decides to provide such a service.
Firstly, in the general case of search engines providing indexing of content, this is legal and there are legal cases to back it up (in the UK: antiquesportfolio) so long as the indexes are not copies.
Secondly, in the case of USENET groups and mailing lists, then in the process of submitting a message to the mailing list or group, you have given an implicit license for the message to be reproduced within the nature of the particular technology at hand. This means if at a later date you object to a message in a mailing list that you wrote in the past, you don't really have the ability to retract it. In all cases, anyone deciding to use the material in another way (e.g. creating a commercial CDROM of USENET material for a marked up price) would be violating your (and others) copyright. However, if they were providing that CDROM as a distribution service for USENET itself (e.g. "get your monthly USENET CDROM") then this is probably within the bounds of legality as it is still transfer via the USENET system, and the cost is likely to be that to reflect media/distribution costs rather than some specific aim to make a commercial product out of your material.
Finally, in the specific case of copies of websites, yes this is a violation of copyright - but as far as I know this has not been tested in a court of law. The use of the Robots Exclusion Protocol and the NOARCHIVE, NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW elements allow a weasal argument suggesting that it is inherent in the WWW itself (as a new form of media / technology) that search engine indexing and archiving / caching is legal unless you specifically disallow it with this mechanism. It may also be the case that if this archiving / caching was carried out for profit or at price greater than fair for distribution/media then a party is making an economic gain out of your material and this suggests an inequitable violation of your economic rights.
Another point to remember is that in WTO treaties that resulted in DMCA provisions, as enacted in the UK and EU, there are specific fair use allowances for intermediate copies of a copyright work as necessary for the telecommunications medium itself (this would seem to allow things like store-and-forward systems, and caching).