In windows world don't your applications need to be compiled to the 64-bit windows platform in order to work? If so, getting a x86-64 windows release is not an option, as some of the people who need to access that much memory are using professional applications that cost way too much to just dump and re-buy.
The article you failed to read pointed out that, although some Windows distributions claim to support PAE, they still artificially set the 4GB limit while the same machine running a PAE-enabled linux kernel benefits from a 64GB limit.
So, as GP rightfully pointed out, no, linux does not have the same limit as Windows.
Your post would be even greater if you mentioned it was the Leibniz formula for pi. I didn't knew that formula and, as you hadn't mentioned the source, I had to search for it. In fact, wikipedia has a (relatively) long list of pi numerical approximations, which makes up for a very interesting read.
So kudos for the post, Antique Geekmeister. It's posts like yours that make/. a fun site to read.
If you had read the article you would know that they adopted FASM as their language/compiler, which offers features such as macros. As soon as you are producing source code files to be processed by programs whose work goes beyond simply mapping your instructions to machine code then we are no longer talking about assemblers. As soon as your code starts relying on features such as macros, libraries and other high-level abstractions then we have entered firmly in compiler country. After all, just because you name something as "assembly" it doesn't mean that the step between writing code and generating object code doesn't have a lot of abstraction in between. Just think of HLA for example.
Nice aphorism. Pity its such nonsense - especially when used in a context other than cryptography (where it almost makes sense).
"Security through obscurity" may be weak security, but it has an effect. If you leave my front door key hidden behind a loose brick, then its more secure than leaving it under a flower pot, which is in turn more secure than leaving it in plain view. Neither is a particularly good idea, but if you must leave a key for some reason then the more obscure the better.
I hope you can understand that what you've written does nothing to prove that security through obscurity brings any security at all. The fact that someone hides his key in a loose brick, under a flower pot or even in plain view doesn't make his house secure. Period. They are all represent very insecure ways to manage the access to your home and nit picking what option is more insecure does nothing to disprove that they are all unsafe. Or, to put it in other words, that security through obscurity is no security at all.
Now, what if some joker posts on a popular internet site "Mr X leaves his key behind a loose brick by the front door of 29 West Wallaby Street. He leaves for work at 8am and doesn't come back until 6pm. There's a new looking satellite dish, so he might have a decent TV, and I saw him going into a posh jewelers the other week so I think he's loaded"? Now, Mr X was running a risk, since anybody could have found that out if they were determined, but bundling it up in a red ribbon and making it public hugely increases his exposure.
That doesn't make any sense. Just because someone compiled a list of freely available and accessible facts doesn't make those facts any less available or accessible. The facts are still out there, it's still public knowledge and Mr X is still as exposed as he was before the list was compiled. The fact that someone bothered compiling them will not stop anyone from doing the exact same thing at their own terms. Believing otherwise is nothing more than believing you are safer by burying your head in sand.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from responsibility.
No one said otherwise. Nonetheless, the responsibility lies in those that made it possible for that information to become public, not those who publish lists with that information. After all, if you attack freedom of speech and punish those who compiled that sort of lists then what do you accomplish? Are you any safer if there are people out there who can just as easily access that information but decide not to publish it?
oh and slashdot, fix your damn code in order to support comments with decent paragraphs
If the company picked up the source code for the linux kernel, altered (extensively or not) to their liking, built an OS based on that kernel and started distributing the binaries without any hint it was linux and much less publishing the interfaces and even the source code then how exactly is it any different than "rolling their own proprietary black box" ?
Moreover, if someone picks up a copyrighted work and intentionally breaks the license agreement that made it possible for them to access that copyrighted work to begin with then that person just set him/herself for a lot of legal pain. That is true for any type of copyrighted work, including open source and any flavour of proprietary software. So no, it doesn't affect the uptake of linux, as any copyright dispute involving proprietary software affects the uptake of proprietary.
You are wrong. All countries who implemented their copyright system following France's tradition do grant the right to access a copyrighted work without authorization as long as, among other conditions, the distribution is purely non-commercial and doesn't affect commercial distribution and if the access to the work is exclusively for personal use. Although pressure from the US is trying to force legislation is trying to erase the work of art's status as a cultural manifestation and replacing it with a status similar to a perishable good or even that of a purely commercial service, that doesn't take away the current state of affairs.
And to clear your misconceptions, the special case regarding Spain's clarification of their copyright legislation (which is also based on France's copyright tradition, is that it acknowledged that transfering any file through a network does not have any relevant impact on the copyrighted work's commercialization.
No, you are wrong. The GPL does not nor it can ever "go beyond copyright". In fact, the GPL doesn't go half as far as any proprietary license goes, as it doesn't impose all those extensive usage constrictions and access limitations that companies such as Microsoft impose on their product buyers/licensees.
To make it clear for you, with the GPL, you are free to do pretty much everything you wish to do with a software package licensed under it, including redistributing copies to whoever is interested in acquiring them. It doesn't matter who copies the work, how it copies and why it copies. The communication medium is also perfectly irrelevant. If someone wishes to use a GPL software that person is free to do anything he wishes to do with his copy. That's a pretty lax copyright policy right there.
On the other hand, your generic proprietary software is armed to the teeth with a long list of absurd and ridiculous legal restrictions that forces all licensees to jump through all kinds of hoops just to be able to use it, including extremely limited versions. Proprietary software licenses such as the one that Microsoft concedes to their customers even tie down their customers to petty details such as hardware upgrades and what type of hardware you may or may not run. And let's not even talk about redistributing or having access to the source code. Those rights are, in the proprietary world, laughable and unthinkable. Since when you can redistribute any release of Microsoft Windows? You can't. And MS makes damn sure you do not by arming itself with copyright law and clauses that grant them the right to raid your business if they suspect that you are using unlicensed copies of their software. That's what going beyond copyright law is.
So please avoid accusing others of being disingenuous while claiming that GPLed software goes beyond copyright while claiming that somehow proprietary software is so free and righteous. You may claim all you like that up is down and that shit smells of roses but unfortunately facts don't go that way.
The GPL is as "viral" as any other copyrighted work. After all, the author does not lose his copyright just because he authorized someone to access his work. In fact, if I happen to rip a a copy of Microsoft's Windows XP from an original and fully licensed install CD that a buddy of mine bought then Microsoft keeps his copyright not only on my buddy's CD install but also on the copy I ripped myself.
The same thing applies to any GPL software. For example, if my buddy downloaded some GPL package from the project site itself and then sent me a copy of that then the original author would still keep his copyright over my copy and my buddy's copy.
There is no mystery. Copyright sticks to any reincarnation of any copyrighted work and it lingers until the copyright is void. The copyright holder always keeps a say so on what anyone may do with his work. The only thing that differs from the Microsoft Windows XP case and the GPLed software case is that the author of the GPLed software explicitly authorizes redistribution, which is something that Microsoft doesn't do with XP. Other than that, the licenses are still valid, they apply to each and every copy made of their work and the authors still have a say so on their works.
If you haven't noticed, a company is nothing more than a social organization, along with each department and even coding teams. When anyone is interviewed for a job, the interviewer not only evaluates the candidate based on his technical prowess but also if he is socially able (i.e., can work in a team and as a team, is able to help others, can adjust to a team in order to accomplish tasks, etc...). If a school only focuses on the technical aspect (i.e., learn the language) then it may even be able to dump in the job market tons of people with encyclopaedic knowledge but if they haven't learned how to work well with others then those graduates may as well file for a job at MacDonalds.
And also let's not forget that a university is supposed to make the so called elites, the "leaders of tomorrow" and that every relevant business transaction is, at it's heart, a social interaction. You are free to try to minimize the importance of learning how to socialize and handle yourself in social interactions. Nonetheless, don't fool yourself by believing that it isn't a vital skill in a professional environment. And let's not forget that it's far easier to teach someone how to program than to teach him how to deal with people.
Why exactly do you believe that a programming language class requiring the students to deliver a work assignment somehow means that you will not learn how to program? Moreover, did your K-12 curriculum included learning how to be a part of a team writing software?
It will also force socialization and it's an excellent way for students to learn how to work in a team. That alone is more important than whatever grade they will get in any "learn how to program" course.
Nothing happens because of science. Science is nothing more than a systematic method of finding out why stuff happens and how they happen. Knowing exactly why something works does not in any way put in question the existence and influence of a superior being.
Also, do not confuse religion with the existence of a superior being. More precisely, do not confuse the lack of religion with the lack of belief that there is no superior being. Organized religion is nothing more than a form of social organization that managed to get people to associate themselves with it and managed to gain enough power and influence to force their associates to follow orders and rules dictated by the organization's upper structures. That means that not following a religion does not in any way put in question the existence of a superior being. It only jeopardizes the ability of those social structures to have power over people and have influence over society.
So please don't confuse things. Believing in science doesn't mean you don't believe in a superior being and believing in a superior being doesn't mean you should disdain science. The only effect that the scientific method may have on religion is when someone proves without a doubt that some crap that some illuminated guy from an organized religion has been shoveling onto their followers is bulk. And that isn't a problem related to scientific method nor the existence of a superior being. The problem is that clueless people have been trying to use the existence of a superior being to contrived lies made up by them to be able to control the population.
Quality control? How come you assume that everything that a independent studio produces must be some sort of "fart app" or "flashlight app" while at the same time assuming that everything a big studio produces is somehow a quality product? I mean, I can't figure out how exactly do you improve quality by raising barriers to entry. In fact, the only thing that you achieve by putting in those barriers is degrading competition and putting the market in the supply side, which never does anything for quality, nor the consumer.
How can you claim that "FOSS' generally decentralized model (and that damn egalitarian hacker ethic) works against this." and insinuate that FOSS projects doesn't have anyone steering the boat when at the same time you base your accusations on the management merits and successful steering of a FOSS project?
How come? When I perform a Kubuntu install from scratch I just need to pop a CD into the drive, boot from that CD and let the install process work it's magic. After 15 minutes the installation is done and when I reboot I have a fully working workstation that not only installed all drivers (even non-free drivers for nvidia graphics cards and broadcom wifi cards) but also all productivity software I need. How isn't that Joe PC's definition of "just works"? Or do you believe that being forced to spend more than half an hour babysitting a Windows install to, after that, being forced to juggle driver and application CDs just to get a bare bones working PC?
You may FUD and astroturf all you like but you can't argue with facts.
* The backup utility actually lets you select what files to backup again, rather than just "Pictures" or "Documents".
Does that justify a multi-hundred euros upgrade?
* You can burn ISO files straight from Explorer.
Wow, something that it's being done in linux since... 2003? And what timing. Who burns CDs anymore? Microsoft releases that functionality exactly when people are starting to use memory cards, USB flash drives and external HDs instead of CDs (measly 700MB of data) and even DVDs.
So what exactly does windows 7 have that is either exciting or even worth a hundred euros?
Planned obsolescence has nothing to do with launching a new model with added features. It means that a product is designed with inherited design flaws that will end up break it or render it unusable. We are talking about, for example, MP3 players that come with soldered-on batteries that only support a limited number of recharges before becoming unusable/unrechargeable, calculators/cell phones whose keys start to fail after a few months of use or that capacitors on your motherboard of choice would start popping out only after a couple months of use.
In the case of a Pentium III, planned obsolescence doesn't mean that you will not be able to play Crysis on it but that, for example, after some time it would start to give random errors that would end up making any OS crash.
Because that way companies would have absolutely zero incentives to produce easily/cheaply recyclable goods. To put it in other words, everything would stay the same with the sole exception that the people (i.e., you and me) would be forced to pay for a service that they do not have any influence on.
No. According to the Tor project, it isn't possible.
Because each relay sees no more than one hop in the circuit, neither an eavesdropper nor a compromised relay can use traffic analysis to link the connection's source and destination.
So, according to that description I believe that the iranian government would only stand a chance of being able to monitor traffic if the entire network was comprised of tainted tor nodes provided by the state of Iran. So even under that scenario Iran's job would become a bit harder if suddenly more people started contributing to the tor project. At least that's my non-security expert take on that. Nonetheless I'm getting my tor node up and running.
I run KDE, both the 3.5.* version and the current 4.3.* version. The non-focus scrolling feature was always available on KDE, even in the far gone years of 4.1.*. The KDE migration from 3.5 to 4.0 may have had left a lot of features behind but scrolling focus was never one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
In windows world don't your applications need to be compiled to the 64-bit windows platform in order to work? If so, getting a x86-64 windows release is not an option, as some of the people who need to access that much memory are using professional applications that cost way too much to just dump and re-buy.
The article you failed to read pointed out that, although some Windows distributions claim to support PAE, they still artificially set the 4GB limit while the same machine running a PAE-enabled linux kernel benefits from a 64GB limit.
So, as GP rightfully pointed out, no, linux does not have the same limit as Windows.
This is nothing but a scam to rip off the tooth fairy. Shame on you, science.
So kudos for the post, Antique Geekmeister. It's posts like yours that make /. a fun site to read.
If you had read the article you would know that they adopted FASM as their language/compiler, which offers features such as macros. As soon as you are producing source code files to be processed by programs whose work goes beyond simply mapping your instructions to machine code then we are no longer talking about assemblers. As soon as your code starts relying on features such as macros, libraries and other high-level abstractions then we have entered firmly in compiler country. After all, just because you name something as "assembly" it doesn't mean that the step between writing code and generating object code doesn't have a lot of abstraction in between. Just think of HLA for example.
Nice aphorism. Pity its such nonsense - especially when used in a context other than cryptography (where it almost makes sense).
"Security through obscurity" may be weak security, but it has an effect. If you leave my front door key hidden behind a loose brick, then its more secure than leaving it under a flower pot, which is in turn more secure than leaving it in plain view. Neither is a particularly good idea, but if you must leave a key for some reason then the more obscure the better.
I hope you can understand that what you've written does nothing to prove that security through obscurity brings any security at all. The fact that someone hides his key in a loose brick, under a flower pot or even in plain view doesn't make his house secure. Period. They are all represent very insecure ways to manage the access to your home and nit picking what option is more insecure does nothing to disprove that they are all unsafe. Or, to put it in other words, that security through obscurity is no security at all.
Now, what if some joker posts on a popular internet site "Mr X leaves his key behind a loose brick by the front door of 29 West Wallaby Street. He leaves for work at 8am and doesn't come back until 6pm. There's a new looking satellite dish, so he might have a decent TV, and I saw him going into a posh jewelers the other week so I think he's loaded"? Now, Mr X was running a risk, since anybody could have found that out if they were determined, but bundling it up in a red ribbon and making it public hugely increases his exposure.
That doesn't make any sense. Just because someone compiled a list of freely available and accessible facts doesn't make those facts any less available or accessible. The facts are still out there, it's still public knowledge and Mr X is still as exposed as he was before the list was compiled. The fact that someone bothered compiling them will not stop anyone from doing the exact same thing at their own terms. Believing otherwise is nothing more than believing you are safer by burying your head in sand.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from responsibility.
No one said otherwise. Nonetheless, the responsibility lies in those that made it possible for that information to become public, not those who publish lists with that information. After all, if you attack freedom of speech and punish those who compiled that sort of lists then what do you accomplish? Are you any safer if there are people out there who can just as easily access that information but decide not to publish it?
oh and slashdot, fix your damn code in order to support comments with decent paragraphs
If the company picked up the source code for the linux kernel, altered (extensively or not) to their liking, built an OS based on that kernel and started distributing the binaries without any hint it was linux and much less publishing the interfaces and even the source code then how exactly is it any different than "rolling their own proprietary black box" ?
Moreover, if someone picks up a copyrighted work and intentionally breaks the license agreement that made it possible for them to access that copyrighted work to begin with then that person just set him/herself for a lot of legal pain. That is true for any type of copyrighted work, including open source and any flavour of proprietary software. So no, it doesn't affect the uptake of linux, as any copyright dispute involving proprietary software affects the uptake of proprietary.
It appears that you somehow are forgetting the multiple reports that the judge was clearly biased.
You are wrong. All countries who implemented their copyright system following France's tradition do grant the right to access a copyrighted work without authorization as long as, among other conditions, the distribution is purely non-commercial and doesn't affect commercial distribution and if the access to the work is exclusively for personal use. Although pressure from the US is trying to force legislation is trying to erase the work of art's status as a cultural manifestation and replacing it with a status similar to a perishable good or even that of a purely commercial service, that doesn't take away the current state of affairs.
And to clear your misconceptions, the special case regarding Spain's clarification of their copyright legislation (which is also based on France's copyright tradition, is that it acknowledged that transfering any file through a network does not have any relevant impact on the copyrighted work's commercialization.
No, you are wrong. The GPL does not nor it can ever "go beyond copyright". In fact, the GPL doesn't go half as far as any proprietary license goes, as it doesn't impose all those extensive usage constrictions and access limitations that companies such as Microsoft impose on their product buyers/licensees.
To make it clear for you, with the GPL, you are free to do pretty much everything you wish to do with a software package licensed under it, including redistributing copies to whoever is interested in acquiring them. It doesn't matter who copies the work, how it copies and why it copies. The communication medium is also perfectly irrelevant. If someone wishes to use a GPL software that person is free to do anything he wishes to do with his copy. That's a pretty lax copyright policy right there.
On the other hand, your generic proprietary software is armed to the teeth with a long list of absurd and ridiculous legal restrictions that forces all licensees to jump through all kinds of hoops just to be able to use it, including extremely limited versions. Proprietary software licenses such as the one that Microsoft concedes to their customers even tie down their customers to petty details such as hardware upgrades and what type of hardware you may or may not run. And let's not even talk about redistributing or having access to the source code. Those rights are, in the proprietary world, laughable and unthinkable. Since when you can redistribute any release of Microsoft Windows? You can't. And MS makes damn sure you do not by arming itself with copyright law and clauses that grant them the right to raid your business if they suspect that you are using unlicensed copies of their software. That's what going beyond copyright law is.
So please avoid accusing others of being disingenuous while claiming that GPLed software goes beyond copyright while claiming that somehow proprietary software is so free and righteous. You may claim all you like that up is down and that shit smells of roses but unfortunately facts don't go that way.
The GPL is as "viral" as any other copyrighted work. After all, the author does not lose his copyright just because he authorized someone to access his work. In fact, if I happen to rip a a copy of Microsoft's Windows XP from an original and fully licensed install CD that a buddy of mine bought then Microsoft keeps his copyright not only on my buddy's CD install but also on the copy I ripped myself.
The same thing applies to any GPL software. For example, if my buddy downloaded some GPL package from the project site itself and then sent me a copy of that then the original author would still keep his copyright over my copy and my buddy's copy.
There is no mystery. Copyright sticks to any reincarnation of any copyrighted work and it lingers until the copyright is void. The copyright holder always keeps a say so on what anyone may do with his work. The only thing that differs from the Microsoft Windows XP case and the GPLed software case is that the author of the GPLed software explicitly authorizes redistribution, which is something that Microsoft doesn't do with XP. Other than that, the licenses are still valid, they apply to each and every copy made of their work and the authors still have a say so on their works.
So can we please stop with this "viral" nonsense?
If you haven't noticed, a company is nothing more than a social organization, along with each department and even coding teams. When anyone is interviewed for a job, the interviewer not only evaluates the candidate based on his technical prowess but also if he is socially able (i.e., can work in a team and as a team, is able to help others, can adjust to a team in order to accomplish tasks, etc...). If a school only focuses on the technical aspect (i.e., learn the language) then it may even be able to dump in the job market tons of people with encyclopaedic knowledge but if they haven't learned how to work well with others then those graduates may as well file for a job at MacDonalds.
And also let's not forget that a university is supposed to make the so called elites, the "leaders of tomorrow" and that every relevant business transaction is, at it's heart, a social interaction. You are free to try to minimize the importance of learning how to socialize and handle yourself in social interactions. Nonetheless, don't fool yourself by believing that it isn't a vital skill in a professional environment. And let's not forget that it's far easier to teach someone how to program than to teach him how to deal with people.
Why exactly do you believe that a programming language class requiring the students to deliver a work assignment somehow means that you will not learn how to program? Moreover, did your K-12 curriculum included learning how to be a part of a team writing software?
It will also force socialization and it's an excellent way for students to learn how to work in a team. That alone is more important than whatever grade they will get in any "learn how to program" course.
Nothing happens because of science. Science is nothing more than a systematic method of finding out why stuff happens and how they happen. Knowing exactly why something works does not in any way put in question the existence and influence of a superior being.
Also, do not confuse religion with the existence of a superior being. More precisely, do not confuse the lack of religion with the lack of belief that there is no superior being. Organized religion is nothing more than a form of social organization that managed to get people to associate themselves with it and managed to gain enough power and influence to force their associates to follow orders and rules dictated by the organization's upper structures. That means that not following a religion does not in any way put in question the existence of a superior being. It only jeopardizes the ability of those social structures to have power over people and have influence over society.
So please don't confuse things. Believing in science doesn't mean you don't believe in a superior being and believing in a superior being doesn't mean you should disdain science. The only effect that the scientific method may have on religion is when someone proves without a doubt that some crap that some illuminated guy from an organized religion has been shoveling onto their followers is bulk. And that isn't a problem related to scientific method nor the existence of a superior being. The problem is that clueless people have been trying to use the existence of a superior being to contrived lies made up by them to be able to control the population.
Quality control? How come you assume that everything that a independent studio produces must be some sort of "fart app" or "flashlight app" while at the same time assuming that everything a big studio produces is somehow a quality product? I mean, I can't figure out how exactly do you improve quality by raising barriers to entry. In fact, the only thing that you achieve by putting in those barriers is degrading competition and putting the market in the supply side, which never does anything for quality, nor the consumer.
How can you claim that "FOSS' generally decentralized model (and that damn egalitarian hacker ethic) works against this." and insinuate that FOSS projects doesn't have anyone steering the boat when at the same time you base your accusations on the management merits and successful steering of a FOSS project?
How come? When I perform a Kubuntu install from scratch I just need to pop a CD into the drive, boot from that CD and let the install process work it's magic. After 15 minutes the installation is done and when I reboot I have a fully working workstation that not only installed all drivers (even non-free drivers for nvidia graphics cards and broadcom wifi cards) but also all productivity software I need. How isn't that Joe PC's definition of "just works"? Or do you believe that being forced to spend more than half an hour babysitting a Windows install to, after that, being forced to juggle driver and application CDs just to get a bare bones working PC?
You may FUD and astroturf all you like but you can't argue with facts.
More to the point, it sure clears up that controversy surrounding wikipedia paid edits, which some wikipedia editors tried to push a while ago.
Does that justify a multi-hundred euros upgrade?
Wow, something that it's being done in linux since... 2003? And what timing. Who burns CDs anymore? Microsoft releases that functionality exactly when people are starting to use memory cards, USB flash drives and external HDs instead of CDs (measly 700MB of data) and even DVDs.
So what exactly does windows 7 have that is either exciting or even worth a hundred euros?
Planned obsolescence has nothing to do with launching a new model with added features. It means that a product is designed with inherited design flaws that will end up break it or render it unusable. We are talking about, for example, MP3 players that come with soldered-on batteries that only support a limited number of recharges before becoming unusable/unrechargeable, calculators/cell phones whose keys start to fail after a few months of use or that capacitors on your motherboard of choice would start popping out only after a couple months of use.
In the case of a Pentium III, planned obsolescence doesn't mean that you will not be able to play Crysis on it but that, for example, after some time it would start to give random errors that would end up making any OS crash.
Because that way companies would have absolutely zero incentives to produce easily/cheaply recyclable goods. To put it in other words, everything would stay the same with the sole exception that the people (i.e., you and me) would be forced to pay for a service that they do not have any influence on.
So, according to that description I believe that the iranian government would only stand a chance of being able to monitor traffic if the entire network was comprised of tainted tor nodes provided by the state of Iran. So even under that scenario Iran's job would become a bit harder if suddenly more people started contributing to the tor project. At least that's my non-security expert take on that. Nonetheless I'm getting my tor node up and running.
It would, if the anyone clicked on the articles to read them. IF anyone clicked on the articles to read them.
New at this, aren't we?
I run KDE, both the 3.5.* version and the current 4.3.* version. The non-focus scrolling feature was always available on KDE, even in the far gone years of 4.1.*. The KDE migration from 3.5 to 4.0 may have had left a lot of features behind but scrolling focus was never one of them.