Actually, the point being lost is that it's USE of the code which is against the rules. Even if this was mailed to the kernel hackers list, the onus would be on M$ to review the kernel on a continuing basis to see if M$ code was included, and if so, THEN and only then would the legal issues arise.
The biggest annoyance in this case goes to the kernel 'decision committee' (Torvalds, Cox, etc.) who will have to monitor submissions to make sure none of the code appears possible M$ code.
Another thought...maybe this is an ego-saving move on M$'s part...they were possibly about to make this code open source anyway?
If, in some devious backroom meeting, MS decided once and for all to kill open source all they would have to do is allow is allow some non-vital, but interesting code to be available for a hack, have some blackops MS crony post it to Slashdot, ask all coders if they read Slashdot regularly, then fight every open source code release on licensing issues until the point becomes moot.
Not that I'm saying they'd DO that, but it's possible.
Everything in robotics still seems like the toys I had in the mid 70's (plus fancy features). I dunno, but it seems to me that we should a lot further along than this.
1) Try to right-click on a link. No dice.
2) No option in the menus to open a new browser window.
The above make it impossible to open two (or more) browser windows to view separate pages. Since this is definitely my favorite way to surf, it makes it pretty ugly. You can start up two copies of KMeleon, but it bogs pretty bad (I assume it opens two complete copies since it appears twice in the Ctrl-Alt-Del task box).
Basically, it has potential...it's faster than Netscape or IE on my PII350. It renders nicely, though occasionally seems to miss images. I don't particularly like, or need, the spasmatic approach to HTML rendering (moving page parts around as it discovers the sizes of images it's loading) like IE, so that's a bit of a negative (plus, I suspect a performance hit).
It also loads faster than IE or Netscape in my experience. Text inside form tags seems a little smaller than expected, but it has Flash and Java support, so they have paid attention to getting the details right - I suspect they'll fix this soon. History and autocompletion aren't implemented, which really makes repeated surfing uncomfortable, though Netscape for Linux doesn't autocomplete either and I got used to it.
I'd like to ditch Netscape and IE on my office machine (which is forced to run Windows for compatibility), but until some of these are in place, not much I can do.
HTML is a tricky point...it's half programming (well, sorta) and half design. There are huge volumes of people who know HTML backwards and forwards, but make website that make your eyes water. There are also huge number of designers who can't make tables and leave ugly borders on their frames.
There are valid reasons why design companies (ie advertising agencies) hire out their website, and equally valid reasons why a high-tech company does the same.
As examples...look at the standard 15 year-old neighbours kid who is hiring himself out as a webdesigner for $25 per website. At that price he's gonna shove out crap, guaranteed, but people will hire him. Experience and professionalism count for a lot. You'll find a heck of a lot of these in Yahoo's Webdesign area.
On the other end of the scale, you'll find places like Blast Radius doing high quality work, albeit at a premium price.
The point of the matter here is, when you're hiring a webdesigner/webdesign company, you've GOT to spend the time checking their previous work, and balance the good or bad things you see with how much that website is gonna cost you.
WHy do explosives, or DNA, when walk-through drug testing gets those nasty/crack-head/potsmoker/hippie/commie/dregs of society offthe streets in record numbers.
"Mr. Watson, you are under arrest...our detector on the corner of 5th and Main smelled cannabis when you walked by."
"Honest Dad, I wasn't smoking! I just walked near the smoke-pit at lunch hour!"
These technologies are extremely dangerous in the hands of the stupid, greedy, or criminal.
So...all that needs to be done is to get the root servers to learn who is authoritive for the.blarg domain, and.blarg would exist...Now, since earlier in the posts, it turns out that ICANN now controls the root servers instead of NSI, we can safely say that pushing ICANN to increase the number of TLDs is the right way to go.
Now understandably, ICANN moves slower than Alan Cox installing Win2k server, so maybe it's time for a petition with teeth? (As in: I want the TLDs ASAP, or I'm going to start my own TLD)...if there are enough signatures, they will have to implement them sooner rather than later. The implementation should not be that hard from a technical standpoint, should it?
1. They charge a $30/yr fee, which sucks. 2. They still have the 26 character limit. 3. This is not going to work either until you don't have to change your DNS (and do you really want some unknown company seeing that your IP address has hit 97% of the.perversion domains it has registered).
Coud someone who really knows their stuff explain completely how my copy of Netscape goes out and finds a domain? What happens if I type www.adomainishere.blarg? Does it check the root servers for the administrative server for.blarg domains, or does netscape balk at that?
I agree. But I'll get moderated down for agreeing. That's what Slashdot is all about.
Have you Meta-Moderated today?
TheGeek
Re:Yes -- and one opportunity we missed!
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 1
It blows.
What good are internet keywords that cost you money to register (and then we have the same problem as we do with.com names). Basically all this is, is a search engine that costs you $$ to submit your site to. TheGeek
I've heard tales of Echelon, and others coming out of the US, but here in Canada we've had the government admit to storing a large database of information on large number of citizens, not just a select few who are into politics, rebellion, etc. Though we do have CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) who tends to keep some pretty large files on those who might be termed 'dissidents'.
To quote: "The "extraordinarily detailed database" holds a dossier on almost every person in Canada with as many as 2,000 pieces of information about each person's education, marital status, ethnic origin, mobility, disabilities, income tax, employment and social assistance history.".
It's scary stuff to say the least. Ostensibly, this information has been collected "to plan schools, hospitals, utilities", but it's only one step from being a huge money-maker when sold to advertisers. How would you like to receive targeted marketing from medical companies when they learn from your medical records that you have such-and-such a disease/condition?
Apparently (though I can't find the news article relating to it), there is going to be a dismantling of this database, but do you trust that the information will be destroyed? Or will it be broken down into smaller chunks and disseminated among government agencies responsible for particulars? When you decide to run for prime minister at age 50, will the two months that you were on welfare in your 20's be delivered to the media by some source?
Gotta know this is gonna get moderated down to the point of invisibility. Slashdot censors me on general principles now.
I run Geekrights.org and have done so for a good long time. At one point I sent a submission to Slashdot about my domain, then went on to have a conversation with Rob Malda where he said things like "it's been done before" "it's shit" "there's no need for this on the net" "I hate the word geek and will never post news from websites with Geek in their name".
1.5 weeks later cam the "Your Rights online" section of Slashdot, effectively mimicking Geekrights.org's intentions.
Does it sound at all similar to this story? Forget about impartial viewpoints on Slashdot. They'll always take their own agenda first.
Godwin's Law/prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
I hate the fact that Slashdot is rapidly becoming as bad as Usenet.
In British Columbia Canada there are lots of tech jobs, but overall the pay is crap. Add to that a total of 14% sales tax on most goods and anywhere from 17 to 53% income tax, and you might as well Take a job at McDonalds in any other city. As well, the provincial gov't has taken away rights to overtime pay, time off, etc. ONLY for high tech workers. For more info click here.
So...if anyone's looking for a Linux sysadmin/Technical Manager, drop me a line. Seriously.
Hmmm...let's take an estimate of a half-billion people currently driving cars. I won't tell you what part of my body I pulled that out of, but, for the sake of argument, we'll assume that it's the same one you used for your estimate. Suffice it to say that the U.S. has a quarter-billion residents and most of them drive cars.
Wow, that was easily the most Americentric stat I've seen in a long time...so it's 1/4 billion drivers for the US and 1/4 billion for everywhere else? Assuming 6 billion people on earth, the US has (6 / 0.25) 1/24 of the world population. There is no way that the other 5.75 billion walk everywhere. Your assumption states 250 million drivers other than those in the US. That means one hell of a lot of people either walking or taking the busses.
First they spam me with shit about getting a Network Solutions t-shirt last week (reported to Slashdot, but they didn't think it worthy of approval), now this. Ever get the feeling that they are so desperate for cash they'll do anything?
OpenSRS is getting all my future domains (I have 6 now, with plans for a few more).
...is really that when you develop for Linux you don't have to deal with Microsoft bullshit licensing issues, Microsoft (lack of) support, HUGE costs for development packages (as opposed to a quick visit to Freshmeat). TheGeek
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest annoyance in this case goes to the kernel 'decision committee' (Torvalds, Cox, etc.) who will have to monitor submissions to make sure none of the code appears possible M$ code.
Another thought...maybe this is an ego-saving move on M$'s part...they were possibly about to make this code open source anyway?
TheGeek
If, in some devious backroom meeting, MS decided once and for all to kill open source all they would have to do is allow is allow some non-vital, but interesting code to be available for a hack, have some blackops MS crony post it to Slashdot, ask all coders if they read Slashdot regularly, then fight every open source code release on licensing issues until the point becomes moot.
Not that I'm saying they'd DO that, but it's possible.
TheGeek
Everything in robotics still seems like the toys I had in the mid 70's (plus fancy features). I dunno, but it seems to me that we should a lot further along than this.
TheGeek
1) Try to right-click on a link. No dice.
2) No option in the menus to open a new browser window.
The above make it impossible to open two (or more) browser windows to view separate pages. Since this is definitely my favorite way to surf, it makes it pretty ugly. You can start up two copies of KMeleon, but it bogs pretty bad (I assume it opens two complete copies since it appears twice in the Ctrl-Alt-Del task box).
Basically, it has potential...it's faster than Netscape or IE on my PII350. It renders nicely, though occasionally seems to miss images. I don't particularly like, or need, the spasmatic approach to HTML rendering (moving page parts around as it discovers the sizes of images it's loading) like IE, so that's a bit of a negative (plus, I suspect a performance hit).
It also loads faster than IE or Netscape in my experience. Text inside form tags seems a little smaller than expected, but it has Flash and Java support, so they have paid attention to getting the details right - I suspect they'll fix this soon. History and autocompletion aren't implemented, which really makes repeated surfing uncomfortable, though Netscape for Linux doesn't autocomplete either and I got used to it.
I'd like to ditch Netscape and IE on my office machine (which is forced to run Windows for compatibility), but until some of these are in place, not much I can do.
TheGeek
It seems really strange, all things considered, and how much people complain about the insecurity of FTP.
TheGeek
Napster.com has been updated with a list of Napster-friendly bands /artists to support (buy buying CDs).
TheGeek
There are valid reasons why design companies (ie advertising agencies) hire out their website, and equally valid reasons why a high-tech company does the same.
As examples...look at the standard 15 year-old neighbours kid who is hiring himself out as a webdesigner for $25 per website. At that price he's gonna shove out crap, guaranteed, but people will hire him. Experience and professionalism count for a lot. You'll find a heck of a lot of these in Yahoo's Webdesign area.
On the other end of the scale, you'll find places like Blast Radius doing high quality work, albeit at a premium price.
The point of the matter here is, when you're hiring a webdesigner/webdesign company, you've GOT to spend the time checking their previous work, and balance the good or bad things you see with how much that website is gonna cost you.
And try not to get stuck with one of these.
TheGeek
Happy BDay! Now how long til the next major release? :)
TheGeek
"Mr. Watson, you are under arrest...our detector on the corner of 5th and Main smelled cannabis when you walked by."
"Honest Dad, I wasn't smoking! I just walked near the smoke-pit at lunch hour!"
These technologies are extremely dangerous in the hands of the stupid, greedy, or criminal.
TheGeek
So...all that needs to be done is to get the root servers to learn who is authoritive for the .blarg domain, and .blarg would exist...Now, since earlier in the posts, it turns out that ICANN now controls the root servers instead of NSI, we can safely say that pushing ICANN to increase the number of TLDs is the right way to go.
Now understandably, ICANN moves slower than Alan Cox installing Win2k server, so maybe it's time for a petition with teeth? (As in: I want the TLDs ASAP, or I'm going to start my own TLD)...if there are enough signatures, they will have to implement them sooner rather than later. The implementation should not be that hard from a technical standpoint, should it?
TheGeek
2. They still have the 26 character limit.
3. This is not going to work either until you don't have to change your DNS (and do you really want some unknown company seeing that your IP address has hit 97% of the
Coud someone who really knows their stuff explain completely how my copy of Netscape goes out and finds a domain? What happens if I type www.adomainishere.blarg? Does it check the root servers for the administrative server for .blarg domains, or does netscape balk at that?
TheGeek
Have you Meta-Moderated today?
TheGeek
What good are internet keywords that cost you money to register (and then we have the same problem as we do with .com names). Basically all this is, is a search engine that costs you $$ to submit your site to.
TheGeek
To quote: "The "extraordinarily detailed database" holds a dossier on almost every person in Canada with as many as 2,000 pieces of information about each person's education, marital status, ethnic origin, mobility, disabilities, income tax, employment and social assistance history.".
It's scary stuff to say the least. Ostensibly, this information has been collected "to plan schools, hospitals, utilities", but it's only one step from being a huge money-maker when sold to advertisers. How would you like to receive targeted marketing from medical companies when they learn from your medical records that you have such-and-such a disease/condition?
Apparently (though I can't find the news article relating to it), there is going to be a dismantling of this database, but do you trust that the information will be destroyed? Or will it be broken down into smaller chunks and disseminated among government agencies responsible for particulars? When you decide to run for prime minister at age 50, will the two months that you were on welfare in your 20's be delivered to the media by some source?
TheGeek
I run Geekrights.org and have done so for a good long time. At one point I sent a submission to Slashdot about my domain, then went on to have a conversation with Rob Malda where he said things like "it's been done before" "it's shit" "there's no need for this on the net" "I hate the word geek and will never post news from websites with Geek in their name".
1.5 weeks later cam the "Your Rights online" section of Slashdot, effectively mimicking Geekrights.org's intentions.
Does it sound at all similar to this story? Forget about impartial viewpoints on Slashdot. They'll always take their own agenda first.
TheGeek
I hate the fact that Slashdot is rapidly becoming as bad as Usenet.
TheGeek
So...if anyone's looking for a Linux sysadmin/Technical Manager, drop me a line. Seriously.
TheGeek
Wow, that was easily the most Americentric stat I've seen in a long time...so it's 1/4 billion drivers for the US and 1/4 billion for everywhere else? Assuming 6 billion people on earth, the US has (6 / 0.25) 1/24 of the world population. There is no way that the other 5.75 billion walk everywhere. Your assumption states 250 million drivers other than those in the US. That means one hell of a lot of people either walking or taking the busses.
I think I'm gonna go invest in Greyhound.
TheGeek
As Frank Zappa once said..."Don't pee on the electric fence or you will hit a page fault generated by the MMU".
TheGeek
Try learning "Cross Harp" harmonica and see where it gets ye.
TheGeek
Just kidding about the subject...CONGRATS!
TheGeek
So now all we need is a group with a hate-on for NetSol, and a wack of cash. Hmmmm.....suggestions?
TheGeek
OpenSRS is getting all my future domains (I have 6 now, with plans for a few more).
TheGeek
...is really that when you develop for Linux you don't have to deal with Microsoft bullshit licensing issues, Microsoft (lack of) support, HUGE costs for development packages (as opposed to a quick visit to Freshmeat).
TheGeek
How long before all except N'Sync and their ilk remove themselves from the death-grip?
TheGeek