I'm so sick of this "if its not free its evil" b.s.
Well stated... but in light of the comments (eg "the code was ugly"), it's usually true. Closed source code means you can hide behind a binary. "Back in the day" a lot of good code was written by companies for themselves (AT&T, IBM) because they needed it to work. With commercial code, the product is often in beta for a couple years after its sold. Open source would fix that -- even if it weren't under a free-distribution license.
A programmer who, by the sweat of his or her brow, produces a piece of software, owns that fruits of that labor. It belongs to them. End of story
You mean, the company that programmer got paid by owns the code, right?:) Many companies are making programmers sign away all rights to patentable ideas and software development during their employment (screw work hours) because they don't want you giving away your ideas to anyone else but the company.
When open source is considered, it's considered not by the programmer (in most cases), but by the company officials who are thinking of margins and sales, not always technology.
Anyone who claims that open source is free like speech should recognize the parallels to speech here. If you are a supporter of free speech you have to support an environment where people feel safe to express ideas and opinions that not everyone else agrees with. If you start denigrating some forms of expression, then the environment as a whole is no longer free. Stop this "moral imperative" nonsense. Its noones moral imperative to try to dictate licensing conditions for someone elses work.
Very well stated. I'm not so glad it was attached to the entire rant, but a very true point. Freedom involves capitalistic freedom as well. It is in most software companies' best interests to go open source for many projects (even if under non-redistribution licenses). However, that decisiion should be made by them because they realize its the right thing to do, not by those who want to impose it on them.
For instance (this isn't flame-bait, don't even bother to reply to it!), I don't believe in abortions because I have a high value for human life, period. However, I don't shoot abortion doctors (or condone those who do), nor do I write long diatribes about it. If there is a bill before the government, I will express my views to the government concerning it, but I will not impose my views on my fellow citizens -- it's a democracy here in Canada too.
Likewise, no one ought to "persuade" a company to go open source by slamming them constantly, etc. Open source is a good idea in a technical sense and I don't for a minute buy into this (no names mentioned) idea of it being morally right.
Assuming they buy from a large OEM distributor. I called Merisel for the price on a boxed copy of MS Windows 98 SE (you know, the one with free phone support that the OEM version doesn't come with). It was over $250 (CAN)... that's about $175 US. A few bucks? I don't think so. Considering OEM copies specifically state that your only support is through the OEM. I don't want to sell my customers OEM Windows 9x and have to support it... it's buggy, we all know that. I want MS to support their own software. But then I have to pay the extra because very few customers will.
IMHO, the reason software is so expensive is not primarily because of piracy but because the main consumers are businesses who are more than willing to shell out the money for Windows products. That's the reasoning behind Windows 2000 "editions" (home, business, enterprise)... make an obvious difference between products with a similar core to maintain so that they can price the higher end product much higher (Think high-end Intel and AMD chips).
Individuals get screwed, price-wise, because they aren't the real target market on a curve of price-profit ratios... we learned this in highschool Calculus people... for every dollar you add to the price, your profits go up per copy sold and a certain number of copies won't be sold. You figure out the optimum price not based on how many people will get the product but on optimum profit. If you're the only option, you can price much higher and have this work for you -- MS has lost in the past to software pirates, but in the future it will be to competitors (Linux, BE, etc.). If a 16 year old wants to upgrade to 98, are they going to pay the bucks or pirate it? They'll install Linux in the future... ie, MS isn't losing much money to individual pirates (home users) as they wouldn't buy the software at any rate (in many cases).
Who MS really IS losing money to are large piracy houses who manufacture fake MS Windows boxes, etc. and get them on the shelves. These should be busted by FBI, etc. though, not MS themselves.
You'd be nice to all of us and write a modified MP3 compressor for somewhere around 168 or 256 Kbps with focus on full range of sound quality... less data loss, especially in classical, etc. music. With that kind of space you'd want to store every CD you own in MP3, not just store the MP3's you've got bigger...:)
I shouldn't say this, because it's really offtopic, but Canada is indeed hot in the summer, even further north than Ottawa. I'm 5 hours north of the american border at New York and three hours east of Michigan in Ontario and it hits 35 degrees Celcius here quite often in the summer. The difference is that the summer isn't as long.
Interestingly enough, the screen on a Psion handheld is either 640x240 or 640x480 (colour)... they're not quite pocket sized anymore, but with them attached to (not part of) a cell phone, the Internet would be very usable. I'd expecially love to have one in a holder on my dash board to use mapquest from:).
... all hardware evolves slowly until its supported by Linux...
Re:On the Golden Age of cryptography...
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 1
You make a similar comment to groups like L0PHT and the ROOTSHELL site, that is, if you break codes for a living (or for kicks), you don't ever say that something is (or at least, will always be) unbreakable. It may be infeasable for an attacker to break the code -- the government may not care enough about your taxes to decrypt your records; they'll just throw you in jail waiting for your hearing in 2 years instead...:).
Your neighbour won't find your old E-mails if they're PGP encrypted with IDEA because he probably doesn't have the tools or expertise necessary.
On the same note, PGP and other software are only available in their present states because people in the profession (of large number theory and cryptography) are bothering to remain paranoid and move forward faster than analysis of the previous codes.
I love people who actually read the article before responding...
IMHO, anyone who opens an executable attachment should be glad it didn't format their hard drive... which is much simpler than stealing passwords when you've got dolts who run the program at the recipient's end.
IOMega strikes me as an interesting example of a company that fits on both sides of this fence -- they tend to create new and innovative products every so often to keep customer intrigue; they keep backward reliability in some of their lines but don't worry about inter-compatibility (R&D would suck to make Clik! work with Jaz!)... but at the same time never brings out low price-point hardware...
Well, assuming that's true... and seeing as I'm a touch typist who does easily 80 WPM, I'd get almost 90 with a Dvorak?
That's a good rate;)
(And it's almost always better than that for real touch-typists). The point isn't that it speeds up your typing; Dvorak is mostly intriguing because most of the letters for English typing on on the home keys, preventing RSI in many cases because of a lack of a need to move from the home keys (if you hold your wrists properly).
You've got an interesting point -- for someone who can't understand the number of potential thinking pattern differences. For instance, I find diagrams of flow logic to be completely useless, even in cases of large systems because I think it out better in my mind without them and then punch the code in in such a way as to make the result I want (and leave it readable).
Some other people prefer it other ways... let us be individuals without making value judgements...
Interestingly enough, Intel owns the rights to the letter 'i' when used in lower-case for computer-related things. Actually, Intel owns patents to all kinds of wierd things (including names for unreleased processors we can suppose).
X86.ORG at one time had a full list of them... but I am unable to find them now.
"Extremehope.org" seems appropriate for your attitude...
Bottom line... We don't need laws. We need a more enlightened attitude.
Unless you're able to write arbitrary information into peoples' minds (I know some people who'd love that technology), you're stuck with laws. Why do you think groups of people form governments and laws volitionally? Because they agree on standards and then write them down and maintain them. Sometimes those standards change, other times they don't. Abortion used to be illegal. A case goes through that says otherwise and bang, it's legal.
You want to fight intellectual property laws, go ahead -- I'm not behind you. Why? Because if those responsible for hotbot.com's database of links weren't able to protect it in someway, they wouldn't have bothered to make it (and maintain it) in the first place and I wouldn't have it to use. Open development is good -- idea sharing is good -- technology sharing is better. However, there are things that ought to be protected in the short term so that an individual or group is able to profit from their work if they so desire.
Can I create a proprietary interface to video displays that's better than everyone else's and sell it without showing people how to use it? Sure. Will I make money? Some... initially... until others invent opposing ones that are more open. It's up to companies to realize that some things should be 'open' to the public (developing public at least) and other things should not.
I think it is you who needs the new perspective...
Why should what the NSA wants be the law of the land?
... because our democratically elected officials created that branch of government -- so indirectly it is democratic.
If you actually know something they're doing that you don't like, you write to your representatives... and they may or may not bring it to light and fix it. Mind you, most of what the NSA does in a day is stuff you'd be happy they do... like keeping foreign governments from using spies to grab large contracts (unethically)...:)
(Canada's CSIS - Canadian NSA/CIA - was accused of that one in the Airbus scandal between Canada and France).
You bring up an interesting point about government agencies that most intelligent people realise but forget when thinking in terms of conspiracies -- they're inefficient and relatively slow. Have you ever considered how long it would take, if you had an action plan, as President, to wipe out poverty? Or to enact heatlh care reforms? With the government the way it is, it just would never happen because it takes several months (to a year) for a piece of paper to get from one desk to another and be marked "stupid idea" because it's too old now.
When we think of the NSA as a conspiratorial group, we tend to think of them as a group without links to the regular government channels (which is actually how they were created to some degree) but I doubt they have that complete freedom anymore. Even the army and navy have to answer to government protocol these days... beaurocratese has probably bogged down the NSA as much as Dilbert from one day to the next.
Hopefully they have at least as much fun at work as I do though -- with bigger computers:).
Interestingly enough, I understood the concept of the computer observing its surroundings, but didn't state my assumptions. My assumptions include a) that this computer does -no- observation except that which it is manually fed and b) no computer in the next few years will be able to look outside and comment to itself that beautiful days bring out the nice sounding birds and write a poem about it from the inspiration... without some degree of chaotic programming system (since our brains are considered complex systems for now until we understand the mind more).
And yes, G, E, B is an excellent book my dad made me read a little while back.
Of course with Netscape Smart Surfing, you can type in what you're looking for in your title bar and get it (usually)... like "gnome bugs" (for the bugs.gnome.org site) or "ford mustang" if you want a new car...;)
Depending on the coding techniques used (hopefully not full sentences in lookup tables;), this would be a much better AI accomplishment than a good Chess computer. No offense, Big Blue.:)
Of course, this is inferring that the ability to write a good story is a matter of skill alone... since creativity can only be programmed as a matter of randomness (or chaoticness?), not as one of observation. The "observation" that good writers use to form their stories has had to be inserted somehow... we'll see I guess.
I think what we really want to know is what licensing the source release will be under. Knowing ID software's profits off of their game engines, I doubt it will comply with the OSS model, but it will still be beneficial to both the community and ID software.
If we, as the Quake-3 players-to-be help debug this source, we will make it a better game to play on our own. As long as Carmack is willing to continue the evolution of the OSS-ish model of Quake-3 over time (and he's been good for releasing updates to other closed-source games in the past), we will all end up with a great game.
It is still my suspicion that ID would not be willing to allow others to freely use their VM in other programs without paying the usual licensing, but they may decide to share it in other areas in the future. It would be nice, for instance, if ID helped in the development of MesaGL... (or do they?:).
SCO is the Santa Cruz Operation. If you had read the entire article in question, you would have picked up that SCO is one of the foremost Unix makers in the world. Their address (SCO.COM) might have helped a little, but most of us who have been around for some time have come to know SCO on some level. Their Unixware 7.0 and OpenServer are some of the highest (if not THE highest) selling Unix variants on the market. They also have a lot of clout with the OpenGroup (see X.ORG).
I'm glad somebody straightened that one out for me... I didn't feel like making it work and I was in the process of trying to use that in one of my own scripts...:-)
I'm closer to being British than you (as I am a Canadian) -- and I'm quite proud of the fact that I don't have to bear arms. In fact, it's almost always been illegal to carry a gun in Canada. Guess what, we all feel safer for it. No one who knows their stuff feels safer carrying a gun -- all it means is you can shoot back. It's not going to stop you from getting shot. No one carrying a gun does make you safer... those who do? Law enforcement should (and pretty much does) handle them, not vigilanteism.
If you break into my house, I can call the police or have an alarm system (that costs less than a Colt 45). What good does it do me to own a gun?
Personal privacy, on the other hand, is a different matter -- so don't alienate those who believe in personal privacy by bringing unrelated matters into it. I know that CSIS - <http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca> does random wiretaps and that doesn't bother me much. I'm more worried about keeping drug lords and other large crime rings under control than my personal privacy to that extent. There is, after all, no way for the national security agencies to know if you're a criminal or not until you're caught. Unless, of course, you're saying that criminals are all caught (ha!).
CSIS actually has a well-written statement on that subject in their 1998 report: (emphases mine)
The bombings of American embassy buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are an indication that terrorists will target a country or system that is perceived to be the least defended. Canada cannot afford to be viewed as such a place. Canada's
(and the US') long border and coastlines appeal to terrorist organizations.... As with other democracies, Canada's openness and respect for individual rights and freedoms preclude the suppression of terrorism by ruthless methods. While distance and moderation may make Canada a less likely target than other countries, Canada can also be seen as a relatively safe haven for the same reasons. Finally, the open nature of Canadian society makes us particularly vulnerable to terrorist influence and activities within expatriate communities. Canadians are not immune to violent acts driven by political or religious extremism.
Your comment that "BSD TCP/IP stack has a backing of comercial developers with easy access to quickly evolving standards and 24/7 dedication" is interesting but irrelevant. The original comment, that Linux's TCP/IP stack ought to have been based on BSD's would mean that 5 or 6 years ago it would have been essentially the same and now it would still be different. Where does that get us? Nowhere. What you're essentially saying is that Linux's open development is not as efficient as Berkley's.
Interestingly enough, there aren't any closed TCP/IP standards... most companies take at least several months to implement them at any rate (unofficial specs) and therefore the Linux community has equal access to this information.
You and I can go and read any TCP/IP information that BSD or anyone else can. I may not be able to read their 'private' discusions, but I'm not terribly worried about that.
Maybe if you didn't make such short, blunt, unthought statements, no one would spend time responding in the same way.
... "have hard time to follow standards and ammendments"... besides your glaring spelling mistakes in the original, the Linux community is quite well respected for quickly adding public standards to the kernel code.
If you want proof of easy access to TCP/IP information, refer to PCWebopedia's link list for TCP/IP.
I am pressed to communicate the Linux decision before the technology brief because of information released by QNX in the last few days. This
information had not been reviewed or approved for release by Amiga. In light of our Linux decision, this information is confusing and misleading so I would like to take the time to clarify the situation. I can't disclose any details of the Amiga/QNX discussions because of legally binding confidentiality agreements but I can talk to you about our decision to use the Linux kernel. I think that you will agree that this is the right decision once you understand the reasons for this decision.
Slashdot Mirror
Well stated
You mean, the company that programmer got paid by owns the code, right?
When open source is considered, it's considered not by the programmer (in most cases), but by the company officials who are thinking of margins and sales, not always technology.
Very well stated. I'm not so glad it was attached to the entire rant, but a very true point. Freedom involves capitalistic freedom as well. It is in most software companies' best interests to go open source for many projects (even if under non-redistribution licenses). However, that decisiion should be made by them because they realize its the right thing to do, not by those who want to impose it on them.
For instance (this isn't flame-bait, don't even bother to reply to it!), I don't believe in abortions because I have a high value for human life, period. However, I don't shoot abortion doctors (or condone those who do), nor do I write long diatribes about it. If there is a bill before the government, I will express my views to the government concerning it, but I will not impose my views on my fellow citizens -- it's a democracy here in Canada too.
Likewise, no one ought to "persuade" a company to go open source by slamming them constantly, etc. Open source is a good idea in a technical sense and I don't for a minute buy into this (no names mentioned) idea of it being morally right.
Assuming they buy from a large OEM distributor. I called Merisel for the price on a boxed copy of MS Windows 98 SE (you know, the one with free phone support that the OEM version doesn't come with). It was over $250 (CAN) ... that's about $175 US. A few bucks? I don't think so. Considering OEM copies specifically state that your only support is through the OEM. I don't want to sell my customers OEM Windows 9x and have to support it ... it's buggy, we all know that. I want MS to support their own software. But then I have to pay the extra because very few customers will.
... make an obvious difference between products with a similar core to maintain so that they can price the higher end product much higher (Think high-end Intel and AMD chips).
... we learned this in highschool Calculus people ... for every dollar you add to the price, your profits go up per copy sold and a certain number of copies won't be sold. You figure out the optimum price not based on how many people will get the product but on optimum profit. If you're the only option, you can price much higher and have this work for you -- MS has lost in the past to software pirates, but in the future it will be to competitors (Linux, BE, etc.). If a 16 year old wants to upgrade to 98, are they going to pay the bucks or pirate it? They'll install Linux in the future ... ie, MS isn't losing much money to individual pirates (home users) as they wouldn't buy the software at any rate (in many cases).
IMHO, the reason software is so expensive is not primarily because of piracy but because the main consumers are businesses who are more than willing to shell out the money for Windows products. That's the reasoning behind Windows 2000 "editions" (home, business, enterprise)
Individuals get screwed, price-wise, because they aren't the real target market on a curve of price-profit ratios
Who MS really IS losing money to are large piracy houses who manufacture fake MS Windows boxes, etc. and get them on the shelves. These should be busted by FBI, etc. though, not MS themselves.
You'd be nice to all of us and write a modified MP3 compressor for somewhere around 168 or 256 Kbps with focus on full range of sound quality ... less data loss, especially in classical, etc. music. With that kind of space you'd want to store every CD you own in MP3, not just store the MP3's you've got bigger ... :)
I shouldn't say this, because it's really offtopic, but Canada is indeed hot in the summer, even further north than Ottawa. I'm 5 hours north of the american border at New York and three hours east of Michigan in Ontario and it hits 35 degrees Celcius here quite often in the summer. The difference is that the summer isn't as long.
Have a good one!
Interestingly enough, the screen on a Psion handheld is either 640x240 or 640x480 (colour) ... they're not quite pocket sized anymore, but with them attached to (not part of) a cell phone, the Internet would be very usable. I'd expecially love to have one in a holder on my dash board to use mapquest from :).
...
... all hardware evolves slowly until its supported by Linux
You make a similar comment to groups like L0PHT and the ROOTSHELL site, that is, if you break codes for a living (or for kicks), you don't ever say that something is (or at least, will always be) unbreakable. It may be infeasable for an attacker to break the code -- the government may not care enough about your taxes to decrypt your records; they'll just throw you in jail waiting for your hearing in 2 years instead ... :).
Your neighbour won't find your old E-mails if they're PGP encrypted with IDEA because he probably doesn't have the tools or expertise necessary.
On the same note, PGP and other software are only available in their present states because people in the profession (of large number theory and cryptography) are bothering to remain paranoid and move forward faster than analysis of the previous codes.
I love people who actually read the article before responding ...
... which is much simpler than stealing passwords when you've got dolts who run the program at the recipient's end.
IMHO, anyone who opens an executable attachment should be glad it didn't format their hard drive
IOMega strikes me as an interesting example of a company that fits on both sides of this fence -- they tend to create new and innovative products every so often to keep customer intrigue; they keep backward reliability in some of their lines but don't worry about inter-compatibility (R&D would suck to make Clik! work with Jaz!) ... but at the same time never brings out low price-point hardware ...
:)
... just a rant
Only 15% huh?
... and seeing as I'm a touch typist who does easily 80 WPM, I'd get almost 90 with a Dvorak?
;)
Well, assuming that's true
That's a good rate
(And it's almost always better than that for real touch-typists). The point isn't that it speeds up your typing; Dvorak is mostly intriguing because most of the letters for English typing on on the home keys, preventing RSI in many cases because of a lack of a need to move from the home keys (if you hold your wrists properly).
http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/
You've got an interesting point -- for someone who can't understand the number of potential thinking pattern differences. For instance, I find diagrams of flow logic to be completely useless, even in cases of large systems because I think it out better in my mind without them and then punch the code in in such a way as to make the result I want (and leave it readable).
... let us be individuals without making value judgements ...
Some other people prefer it other ways
Interestingly enough, Intel owns the rights to the letter 'i' when used in lower-case for computer-related things. Actually, Intel owns patents to all kinds of wierd things (including names for unreleased processors we can suppose).
... but I am unable to find them now.
X86.ORG at one time had a full list of them
Unless you're able to write arbitrary information into peoples' minds (I know some people who'd love that technology), you're stuck with laws. Why do you think groups of people form governments and laws volitionally? Because they agree on standards and then write them down and maintain them. Sometimes those standards change, other times they don't. Abortion used to be illegal. A case goes through that says otherwise and bang, it's legal.
You want to fight intellectual property laws, go ahead -- I'm not behind you. Why? Because if those responsible for hotbot.com's database of links weren't able to protect it in someway, they wouldn't have bothered to make it (and maintain it) in the first place and I wouldn't have it to use. Open development is good -- idea sharing is good -- technology sharing is better. However, there are things that ought to be protected in the short term so that an individual or group is able to profit from their work if they so desire.
Can I create a proprietary interface to video displays that's better than everyone else's and sell it without showing people how to use it? Sure. Will I make money? Some
I think it is you who needs the new perspective
... because our democratically elected officials created that branch of government -- so indirectly it is democratic.
If you actually know something they're doing that you don't like, you write to your representatives
(Canada's CSIS - Canadian NSA/CIA - was accused of that one in the Airbus scandal between Canada and France).
You bring up an interesting point about government agencies that most intelligent people realise but forget when thinking in terms of conspiracies -- they're inefficient and relatively slow. Have you ever considered how long it would take, if you had an action plan, as President, to wipe out poverty? Or to enact heatlh care reforms? With the government the way it is, it just would never happen because it takes several months (to a year) for a piece of paper to get from one desk to another and be marked "stupid idea" because it's too old now.
... beaurocratese has probably bogged down the NSA as much as Dilbert from one day to the next.
:).
When we think of the NSA as a conspiratorial group, we tend to think of them as a group without links to the regular government channels (which is actually how they were created to some degree) but I doubt they have that complete freedom anymore. Even the army and navy have to answer to government protocol these days
Hopefully they have at least as much fun at work as I do though -- with bigger computers
Interestingly enough, I understood the concept of the computer observing its surroundings, but didn't state my assumptions. My assumptions include a) that this computer does -no- observation except that which it is manually fed and b) no computer in the next few years will be able to look outside and comment to itself that beautiful days bring out the nice sounding birds and write a poem about it from the inspiration ... without some degree of chaotic programming system (since our brains are considered complex systems for now until we understand the mind more).
And yes, G, E, B is an excellent book my dad made me read a little while back.
Of course with Netscape Smart Surfing, you can type in what you're looking for in your title bar and get it (usually) ... like "gnome bugs" (for the bugs.gnome.org site) or "ford mustang" if you want a new car ... ;)
...
Available for IE as a plug-in
Depending on the coding techniques used (hopefully not full sentences in lookup tables ;), this would be a much better AI accomplishment than a good Chess computer. No offense, Big Blue. :)
... since creativity can only be programmed as a matter of randomness (or chaoticness?), not as one of observation. The "observation" that good writers use to form their stories has had to be inserted somehow ... we'll see I guess.
Of course, this is inferring that the ability to write a good story is a matter of skill alone
I think what we really want to know is what licensing the source release will be under. Knowing ID software's profits off of their game engines, I doubt it will comply with the OSS model, but it will still be beneficial to both the community and ID software.
... (or do they? :).
If we, as the Quake-3 players-to-be help debug this source, we will make it a better game to play on our own. As long as Carmack is willing to continue the evolution of the OSS-ish model of Quake-3 over time (and he's been good for releasing updates to other closed-source games in the past), we will all end up with a great game.
It is still my suspicion that ID would not be willing to allow others to freely use their VM in other programs without paying the usual licensing, but they may decide to share it in other areas in the future. It would be nice, for instance, if ID helped in the development of MesaGL
... we can be hopeful, can't we?
I agree that Redhat buying SCO could work out to be a good thing -- assuming that their employees could be trained to the OSS vision.
However, as for the MS and AT&T holdings, as long as those in the 'against the merger' category are the minority, it's irrelevant.
My only concern would be helping MS to profit from an OSS company like Redhat.
SCO is the Santa Cruz Operation. If you had read the entire article in question, you would have picked up that SCO is one of the foremost Unix makers in the world. Their address (SCO.COM) might have helped a little, but most of us who have been around for some time have come to know SCO on some level. Their Unixware 7.0 and OpenServer are some of the highest (if not THE highest) selling Unix variants on the market. They also have a lot of clout with the OpenGroup (see X.ORG).
Hope this satisfies your "first post" question.
I'm glad somebody straightened that one out for me ... I didn't feel like making it work and I was in the process of trying to use that in one of my own scripts ... :-)
Have a good one!
I'm closer to being British than you (as I am a Canadian) -- and I'm quite proud of the fact that I don't have to bear arms. In fact, it's almost always been illegal to carry a gun in Canada. Guess what, we all feel safer for it. No one who knows their stuff feels safer carrying a gun -- all it means is you can shoot back. It's not going to stop you from getting shot. No one carrying a gun does make you safer ... those who do? Law enforcement should (and pretty much does) handle them, not vigilanteism.
If you break into my house, I can call the police or have an alarm system (that costs less than a Colt 45). What good does it do me to own a gun?
Personal privacy, on the other hand, is a different matter -- so don't alienate those who believe in personal privacy by bringing unrelated matters into it. I know that CSIS - <http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca> does random wiretaps and that doesn't bother me much. I'm more worried about keeping drug lords and other large crime rings under control than my personal privacy to that extent. There is, after all, no way for the national security agencies to know if you're a criminal or not until you're caught. Unless, of course, you're saying that criminals are all caught (ha!).
CSIS actually has a well-written statement on that subject in their 1998 report: (emphases mine)
< http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/en g/publicrp/pub1998e.html>
At any rate, use PGP for E-mail ... protect yourself the right way.
< http://www.linuxsupportline.com/~pgp/>Your comment that "BSD TCP/IP stack has a backing of comercial developers with easy access to quickly evolving standards and 24/7 dedication" is interesting but irrelevant. The original comment, that Linux's TCP/IP stack ought to have been based on BSD's would mean that 5 or 6 years ago it would have been essentially the same and now it would still be different. Where does that get us? Nowhere. What you're essentially saying is that Linux's open development is not as efficient as Berkley's.
... most companies take at least several months to implement them at any rate (unofficial specs) and therefore the Linux community has equal access to this information.
... besides your glaring spelling mistakes in the original, the Linux community is quite well respected for quickly adding public standards to the kernel code.
Interestingly enough, there aren't any closed TCP/IP standards
You and I can go and read any TCP/IP information that BSD or anyone else can. I may not be able to read their 'private' discusions, but I'm not terribly worried about that.
Maybe if you didn't make such short, blunt, unthought statements, no one would spend time responding in the same way.
... "have hard time to follow standards and ammendments"
If you want proof of easy access to TCP/IP information, refer to PCWebopedia's link list for TCP/IP.
Is a much better link, and covers the QNX stuff:
Things are quite a big clearer