It's important, however, that the community is vigilant about the actions of companies like RedHat and VA. I have no doubt that these companies have good intentions and are run by people who genuinely support Free software.
The risk is that we may see monopolies on parts of the new "Linux industry". These might become a problem in the future, when new managers take over. Also, if the kind of editorial bias that people discuss occurs at all, it will be subtle, gradual (and probably in the distant future).
I think for these reasons it is important to make sure there are strong community-owned organisations to keep some kind of parity with the Slashdots and Sourceforges of this world.
If enough influential organisations stay away from the profit goal, then we'll be able to keep the Open Ball rolling...
The real reason the RIAA is pissed off here is because they can imagine sites with nothing but hunders of mp3.com codelines that would allow people to use the mp3.com system to get (more or less) any mp3s they wanted.
Essentially, another industry whose role has been swept away by technology is fighting to suppress that technology wherever it can't control it.
Unfortunately, IIRC, ext2 as it stands is not immune to all crashes. That is, there exist certain situations in which the structure of your file system cannot be restored after a crash. This most often manifests as files turning up in/lost+found.
Unmountable FSes, however, shouldn't happen unless you SERIOUSLY mangle things. In your case, is it a superblock problem, and is it possible to manually request the use of a backup superblock? Alternately, you might be able to mount the FS without the preceeding FS check and get some of the data off it.
As far as making a more fundamentally robust FS for Linux goes, there are a number of projects out there working on log-structured filesystems, some of which will be usable in the near future.
Alas, common sense like this just doesn't come into it.
A very huge and powerful industry has just realised that somebody has swept the control of their product right out from under their feet.
As soon as they release a DVD copy of something, people who want it at high quality, for free, can get it.
Our arguments about the obsolesence of this kind of Intellectual Property, and the fact that they're still going to be making more money than they were from video, don't really matter. What's at stake here is vast amounts of power and money, and big corporate machines don't react well (or rationaly) to losing it.
I would expect that the Norweigan Government came under vast amounts of pressure to take this action.
Well - for those that doubted it - the war is on now. Without without intending to sound absurdely melodramatic, the stakes are what kind of future this planet is going to have...
Well... I can't claim to speak for Jon Katz, but I know that I personally feel a great deal of anger when I see people needlessly excluded from geek culture.
It's not a reflection of my personal problems in dealing with cyber-abuse, or a desire to see women (or anyone else) kept wrapped in cotton wool.
Instead, it's a reaction to the alienation which I have seem some people experience, and a feeling that the world is poorer as a result.
I can understand why, as a woman who is quite happy to stick up for yourself, you might find Katz's comments condescending. Ultimately, however, they
are borne out by statistics - by the attrociously low (and dropping) proportion of women studying computer science, for example.
The fact that you don't need the Jon Katzs of this world to "protect" you, doesn't mean that numerous other (to use an Australianism) "non blokey" geeks couldn't benefit from a less abrasive net.
I know lots of people (especially, but not exclusively, girls) who have dropped out of Computer Science and Engineering courses because of the intolerant attitudes of other students.
Criticising people for being "bleeding hearted liberals" when they try to talk about this problem is, IMNSHO, singularly unhelpful.
I would just like to draw people's attention to a little charity down here in Australia called Computerbank (see signature for URL:).
We collect second hand hardware, install Debian GNU/Linux on it, and give it to students, unemployed people, and community groups that could not otherwise affor computers.
We are particularly keen to help people who are keen to learn genuine computing skills, and to provide net access where it would not otherwise be possible.
$10 000 would be extremely useful to us, because it would enable us to hire a part-time employee to co-ordinate the work of volunteers and add momentum to our various tasks (such as customising the distribution and preparing training material).
This posting is obviously propaganda, so take a look at our site and make up your minds for yourselves...
Unfortunately, even if there are legal restrictions on databases like this, they are unlikely to stop the project.
Andrew Robb, the head of Acxiom Australia, was federal director of the "Liberal" (actually conservative) Party of Australia, and managed Prime Minister John Howard's original election campaign in 1996.
Kerry Packer, who controls PBL (known in Australian press circles as the "Evil Empire" long before they hoooked up with M$:) practically has the Australian Government in his pocket anyway....
When these people want something, they are likely to get it.
It is true that some of the countries mentioned were ruled by despotic regimes. But what about the CIA's role in removing democratically elected governments in Australia and Chile?
In these cases, the democratically elected governments were not tyranical, merely a little too left-wing for the CIA's tastes...
Although we Australians merely had a Government removed with CIA assistance, the Chileans did not fare so well. And none of the thousands of people butchered by Pinochet in Chile were accomplices to tyranny...
The term for this kind of survey is "push-polling". It has been used by political parties in the past, and IIRC is now illegal in Australian politics.
It's also the kind of thing that will get market research companies a very bad name. If you encounter a survey like this, find out the name of the research company (and pass that info around in your posts too;).
In fact, if this story is genuine, and you can find out who did the research, contact (or get your local Linux group to contact) the media. Given that the M$ trial is hot news, this is likely to get a run...
Perhaps under the (IMO ridiculous) systems of conteporary corporate law, IDG has to do things like this to protect its "brand name".
But if a company actually tried to sue someone for infringment in a case like this, they might get their fingers burned. It might not be as spectacular as McLibel, but it's heading in that direction...
The Killer App is dormant, not gone...
on
$200 Linux PCs
·
· Score: 2
A very salient observation you've made there; except that the Killer Apps are still around, but instead of hitting a PC bottleneck, they are restricted by network bandwidth.
Just think of video conferencing, VR environments and other such bandwidth-sucking beasties...
If there was fibre layed to every door, the prices people would be willing to pay for computers would go back up.
Being an enthusiastic Debian user and promoter, I've got to say that this is great news. Firstly, it may start to make Debian a practical choice for first-time Linux users. Of course, Corel and Stormix may have the same effect, so this is not crucial. More importantly, it will help to smooth the transition from a more "user friendly" distribution such as RedHat or Caldera. I've known many GNU/Linux users to begin with one of these and move to Debian once they become a little more comfortable with the environment. Some of them, however, have found switching to Debian rather harrowing- things that are powerful are not necessarily intuitive. I also go the impression from the article that the variant of Debian that they'll be selling won't be a plain "stable" CD image. This is also good news, since it may mean that we won't have to go hunting for up-to-date Xfree86, GNOME, etc.debs...
Slashdot Mirror
The risk is that we may see monopolies on parts of the new "Linux industry". These might become a problem in the future, when new managers take over. Also, if the kind of editorial bias that people discuss occurs at all, it will be subtle, gradual (and probably in the distant future).
I think for these reasons it is important to make sure there are strong community-owned organisations to keep some kind of parity with the Slashdots and Sourceforges of this world.
If enough influential organisations stay away from the profit goal, then we'll be able to keep the Open Ball rolling...
This is true.
The real reason the RIAA is pissed off here is because they can imagine sites with nothing but hunders of mp3.com codelines that would allow people to use the mp3.com system to get (more or less) any mp3s they wanted.
Essentially, another industry whose role has been swept away by technology is fighting to suppress that technology wherever it can't control it.
Unfortunately, IIRC, ext2 as it stands is not immune to all crashes. That is, there exist certain situations in which the structure of your file system cannot be restored after a crash. This most often manifests as files turning up in /lost+found.
Unmountable FSes, however, shouldn't happen unless you SERIOUSLY mangle things. In your case, is it a superblock problem, and is it possible to manually request the use of a backup superblock? Alternately, you might be able to mount the FS without the preceeding FS check and get some of the data off it.
As far as making a more fundamentally robust FS for Linux goes, there are a number of projects out there working on log-structured filesystems, some of which will be usable in the near future.
Not really...
It goes like this:
* MPAA puts pressure on the Norweigan Government to act against "evil hacker".
* Someone senior in Government calls the police, and says "please investigate this case"
* Knock on the door.....
Alas, common sense like this just doesn't come into it.
A very huge and powerful industry has just realised that somebody has swept the control of their product right out from under their feet.
As soon as they release a DVD copy of something, people who want it at high quality, for free, can get it.
Our arguments about the obsolesence of this kind of Intellectual Property, and the fact that they're still going to be making more money than they were from video, don't really matter. What's at stake here is vast amounts of power and money, and big corporate machines don't react well (or rationaly) to losing it.
I would expect that the Norweigan Government came under vast amounts of pressure to take this action.
Well - for those that doubted it - the war is on now. Without without intending to sound absurdely melodramatic, the stakes are what kind of future this planet is going to have...
I like the idea of compiler-genrated prior art stomping on foolish patents.
Unfortunately, I think what the article was originally about was an approximation to the DCT algorithm, not just an optimisation of it.
It's not a reflection of my personal problems in dealing with cyber-abuse, or a desire to see women (or anyone else) kept wrapped in cotton wool.
Instead, it's a reaction to the alienation which I have seem some people experience, and a feeling that the world is poorer as a result.
I can understand why, as a woman who is quite happy to stick up for yourself, you might find Katz's comments condescending. Ultimately, however, they
The fact that you don't need the Jon Katzs of this world to "protect" you, doesn't mean that numerous other (to use an Australianism) "non blokey" geeks couldn't benefit from a less abrasive net.
I know lots of people (especially, but not exclusively, girls) who have dropped out of Computer Science and Engineering courses because of the intolerant attitudes of other students.
Criticising people for being "bleeding hearted liberals" when they try to talk about this problem is, IMNSHO, singularly unhelpful.
I would just like to draw people's attention to a little charity down here in Australia called Computerbank (see signature for URL :).
We collect second hand hardware, install Debian GNU/Linux on it, and give it to students, unemployed people, and community groups that could not otherwise affor computers.
We are particularly keen to help people who are keen to learn genuine computing skills, and to provide net access where it would not otherwise be possible.
$10 000 would be extremely useful to us, because it would enable us to hire a part-time employee to co-ordinate the work of volunteers and add momentum to our various tasks (such as customising the distribution and preparing training material).
This posting is obviously propaganda, so take a look at our site and make up your minds for yourselves...
Unfortunately, even if there are legal restrictions on databases like this, they are unlikely to stop the project.
:) practically has the Australian Government in his pocket anyway....
Andrew Robb, the head of Acxiom Australia, was federal director of the "Liberal" (actually conservative) Party of Australia, and managed Prime Minister John Howard's original election campaign in 1996.
Kerry Packer, who controls PBL (known in Australian press circles as the "Evil Empire" long before they hoooked up with M$
When these people want something, they are likely to get it.
Things aren't looking too good down under....
It is true that some of the countries mentioned were ruled by despotic regimes. But what about the CIA's role in removing democratically elected governments in Australia and Chile?
In these cases, the democratically elected governments were not tyranical, merely a little too left-wing for the CIA's tastes...
Although we Australians merely had a Government removed with CIA assistance, the Chileans did not fare so well. And none of the thousands of people butchered by Pinochet in Chile were accomplices to tyranny...
(offtopic but interesting)
;).
The term for this kind of survey is "push-polling". It has been used by political parties in the past, and IIRC is now illegal in Australian politics.
It's also the kind of thing that will get market research companies a very bad name. If you encounter a survey like this, find out the name of the research company (and pass that info around in your posts too
In fact, if this story is genuine, and you can find out who did the research, contact (or get your local Linux group to contact) the media. Given that the M$ trial is hot news, this is likely to get a run...
Perhaps under the (IMO ridiculous) systems of conteporary corporate law, IDG has to do things like this to protect its "brand name".
But if a company actually tried to sue someone for infringment in a case like this, they might get their fingers burned. It might not be as spectacular as McLibel, but it's heading in that direction...
A very salient observation you've made there; except that the Killer Apps are still around, but instead of hitting a PC bottleneck, they are restricted by network bandwidth.
Just think of video conferencing, VR environments and other such bandwidth-sucking beasties...
If there was fibre layed to every door, the prices people would be willing to pay for computers would go back up.
Being an enthusiastic Debian user and promoter, I've got to say that this is great news. Firstly, it may start to make Debian a practical choice for first-time Linux users. Of course, Corel and Stormix may have the same effect, so this is not crucial. More importantly, it will help to smooth the transition from a more "user friendly" distribution such as RedHat or Caldera. I've known many GNU/Linux users to begin with one of these and move to Debian once they become a little more comfortable with the environment. Some of them, however, have found switching to Debian rather harrowing- things that are powerful are not necessarily intuitive. I also go the impression from the article that the variant of Debian that they'll be selling won't be a plain "stable" CD image. This is also good news, since it may mean that we won't have to go hunting for up-to-date Xfree86, GNOME, etc .debs...