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User: pork_spies

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Comments · 57

  1. Power or Influence on Torvalds the "5th Most-Powerful Man in Tech" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are not the same! Influential people can be those who influence those with power but may have little or no power themselves. Think of advisors to POTUS.

  2. Re:WAP fashionable? on Software Fashion · · Score: 1

    WAP got screwed because of the way it was marketed - "the internet on your mobile" - it just didn't match the billing.

    The best thing about WAP? I built a site in the early days and got a story on the front page of a regional daily paper and a picture in the national press, sent the competition mental. That was a laugh.

  3. Re:This is not the old HP.. on HP Offers Linux Purchasers Indemnification · · Score: 1

    They'd then be in breach of the GPL. So this doesn't wash.

  4. Reinsured on HP Offers Linux Purchasers Indemnification · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Presumably HP are doing this because they can now lay off the risk with an insuring for a low enough price to make it worthwhile. So this doesn't just mean HP are slam dunking SCO, but others - who have no direct IT interests - are doing it too. We are winning.

  5. IRC is next on MSN Cuts Unmonitored Chatrooms Around the Globe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a real moral panic underway in the UK about this now - and the attack is on all unmoderated "chat" - so even the development channel you use is at threat.

  6. This is only part of the process on European Parliament Clashes Over Software Patents · · Score: 1

    In all of this the role of the national government's has been ignored. In essence European legislation works like this: The commission has the power of initiative, the parliament then has to agree to the commission's proposal, the council of ministers then has to agree (by qualified majority) to the measure passed by the parliament.

    Hence if the parliament agrees something the council of ministers can still block it

  7. Re:Interesting. on European Parliament Clashes Over Software Patents · · Score: 1

    I want to read the article, but the server is busted

  8. Governments key to the desktop on eGovOS 3 Announced · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Governments have the power and resources to train thousands of admins to hack free software systems, and they could save millions by not buying you-know-who's licences. So, I hope this goes well.

  9. Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie on Edward Teller Passes Away At 95 · · Score: 1

    Along time ago, in my final year of my degree, I did some basic research on radiation. A post-graduate student showed me an analysis of radioactive materials in a standard sample of soil from Edinburgh - he ascribed the majority of the radioactive material in the soil to the blow ins from the atmospheric tests. Scarey stuff.

    Can anybody quantify this?

  10. The wonderful power of PR on Amphibious Car Beats Urban Congestion · · Score: 1, Troll

    This garbage invention (how many people are really going to want to use it?) got wall to wall coverage in the British media yesterday - even though they made all these ludicrous and bogus claims (eg Thames has no speed limit).

    You have to wonder whether they were giving the hacks loadsa free drinks or something.

    Predictably just about every report mentioned James Bond - the whole thing fed into the British sense of themselves as pluky amateurs (as James Bond surely is).

    Absolutely crap.

  11. Re:Wrong on Halley's Comet Imaged As Transneptunian Object · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yes, I realised after I'd posted that I'd just made a fool of myself. I did see Hailey's comet though - must have been winter 86? I remember showing to the gf, who was distinctly unimpressed.

  12. Wrong on Halley's Comet Imaged As Transneptunian Object · · Score: 1

    As I distinctly remember observing Halley with the naked eye in March 1996 then the /. take on all this is simply wrong.

  13. Re:Now let's watch... on SCO Fined in Munich For Linux Claims · · Score: 1

    The graph on the yahoo site shows why all this has made sense for SCO - their share price has rocketed in a very fragile market. Their claims may be rubbish, but you cannot fault the (short term) business sense here: somebody has made a mint out of this.

  14. Re:Be careful what you wish for... on Linux Gets Mobile(phone) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, the thing is that, thanks to China, 90% of the world's software ain't going to be controlled by Redmond - it will be FOSS.

    All I am saying is that we are about to hit uncharted waters and as a result the paradoxical behaviour examined in The Cathedral and the Bazaar - ie that hackers are free to fork but don't, may break down when the market expands very, very rapidly - as it will if and when mobies go FOSS.

    The thing to think of is the scale - in Europe maybe one in five to one in 10 of the total number of people have a computer, but more than one in two have a mobile.

  15. Be careful what you wish for... on Linux Gets Mobile(phone) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, so world domination is now within reach, but think of the consequences.

    I think a biggish fork (or probably forks) cannot be far away as Linux transitions from the current server/plaything position to the OS of choice.

    Why should 1/4 of the population of the world have their software controlled, however benignly, by some hacker bloke in the US?

    Of course, this might not be a bad thing: lots more resources will flow in, but it might be just too difficult to expect the current system where there is one central repository and everything else is a patch off that, to continue.

    To an extent all of this is prefigured in today's world, but just as with the Unix wars of the 1980s, the future will probably see lots of people talking about "Linux" when their systems are incompatible at a fundamental level.

    But that is the price we will have to pay to play in the majors.

  16. Good - another reason for people to dump MS on Symantec Adds Product Activation · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Dumping MS is no longer a question of ideology. It is now a business necessity, given the way MS software is wide open to attack. if this adds to the cost base of MS then that is good because it will mean more people choose different and more secure options.

  17. Re:Wine? on FWB Admits RealPC for Mac OS X was Vaporware · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a protest in Europe today about the use/granting of software patents. Hence the closure of the site is temporary.

  18. Re:GPL avaiable from LINKSYS on Linksys and the GPL, Again · · Score: 1

    The GPL states no such thing. Making the code available on line does not meet the requirements of the GPL. It has to be supplied, on request, and after a reasonable fee is paid, on a usable medium.

  19. Re:Troubling. on Linksys and the GPL, Again · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look, I write kernel code. not much, but a little. My contact with the users of my code is that if they make something better with my code then they can let me use it too. It's not "going for" anybody to ask that they honour the deal the I (and every other kernel hacker) have struck with them.

  20. Re:Does not matter on DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe · · Score: 1

    Total garbage. If a law has been passed through the EU that you don't like, it is almost certainly becuase your government and your MEPs voted for it - that's how it works. The bureaucrats (aka Civil Service/Commission) draw up the proposals, but the people who decide whether it becomes law or not are the government ministers and the MEPs. If you only woke up to the fact that it was a bad law today then that is your fault.

  21. Re:Does not matter on DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, there are issues about how this directive could be translated into domestic law - it could be in a hard hitting way or it could be in a softer way.

    One the democracy point the issue is this: this matter should have been tackled when the question of principle came up in 2001, not now.

  22. Re:Newsflash on Windows Tech Writer Looks at Linux · · Score: 1

    Every developer was a user first (well, almost - back in the day users and developers were an identity).

    If you don't want new users then you don't want new developers.

  23. Re:Look, games don't *have* eyeballs. on Hacking the XBox · · Score: 1

    This is a good example of the 'hey, I know what I mean, so if I string together a few kind of related words I'm sure you'll know what I mean too' school of self-expression that has done internet discussion so much good over the years :)

    All that is missing from the original posting was an 'r' from the end of 'game'. And, yes, it was making a good point (in contrast to the flame copied over above). Indeed such a game might be something we'd all want to play.

  24. Re:Gentoo for embedded systems on Zynot Foundation Forks Gentoo · · Score: 1

    I think porting gentoo to the embedded world is a tough call. The Linux on Dreamcast lot have been talking about this for a long time, but cannot get enough code to cross compile.

  25. Re:Article on Los Angeles Gets Own TLD · · Score: 1

    If ICANN had assigned a TLD to a city

    They have ... http://www.checkurl.info/standard/tld/va