My first thought was, Hang on - SCO will sue them too. But then I thought, if HP has a SCO license used for HP-UX, presumably that license can be used for Linux too when sold by HP?
If that's the case, is this a cunning plan to take Linux from the masses and place it firmly into corporate ownership? Of course, if the GPL is legally valid, as soon as HP or anyone sells it it's free again, but it just seems very very odd timing.
Well, I don't think it'll go down like that. I mean, sure, Software Images didn't get the contract for 500 CDs, but someone else (like Stebbing Recording Ltd?) did and they probably made a buck out of it. I think it is Bill that needs to watch his back, lest the a flock of hungry penguins eat all the herring while he's busy throwing FUD into the media.
Silly little companies like SI need to go out of business. It sounds like they're being MS-NZ's little bitch, and while that's good for the moment (if you like biting the pillow, that is), I don't expect they'll get any OSS business in the future. Is that a big thing? Yes, because that's the direction the market is moving and they've just blown themselves out of that game.
"I will note that the SEC does require private disclosure to the SEC about the more serious hacks that occur, but nothing and I repeat nothing ever gets out to the public."
Hmm.
Bank X: Hey, SEC, we lost these punter's money.
SEC: Um, OK. Don't let it happen again.
Bank X: Uh, sure. No problem.
SEC: Fancy a game of golf?
Private disclosure to the SEC is all well and good from a keep-it-to-ourselves-and-the-boys-but-don't-tell-t he-people-whose-money-it-was view of disclosure, but hopefully this new bill will force disclosure to the actual customers who provide funds for these companies. Something tells me it won't be that easy though.
How about if your local bank didn't lock it's safe at night, and used shitty supermarket padlocks on the doors? Then didn't tell you that people broke in occasionally when no-one was looking, but quietly increased your fees to cover the losses? Sound reasonable? No, of course it doesn't, but it's not far off the level of security some clowns put online. Personally, I'd like to see the sysadmins name posted in the notices too.:-D
Imagine if these were physical break-ins rather than electronic ones. The money's all the same, the only difference is that until now, it didn't make the evening news. It's about time it stopped being swept under the carpet.
Probably. But the catch is that it should really cost a whole lot less, once the improvements are in place.
It's commonly speculated that huge numbers of hacks go unreported, particularly in the financial sector. If the result of having to own up about it is an increase in security (to improve company image as a result of not being owned so often), I would expect that related losses would go down considerably. If nothing else, the insurance underwriters should reduce costs for those who make improvements, and increase those who don't. It's in everbodies interests to make companies accountable for hacks, and for them to fix the problems. I think any bleating about costs going up will just be an excuse to fleece the consumer over a longer-term.
Now that 3D is really coming to mobile devices, plenty of people will get first-hand experience of emulating floating point for the first time since the 80's.:-)
I don't think so. Enough research has been done into using 3D hardware as an general purpose FPU that the next generation of PDA display chips will probably take care of this anyway (if needed at all). If the choice is between an FPU for software 3D vs real hardware 3D, PC history has shown that the better answer is the latter.
I suspect it's already been done. A quick USPTO search on "software and price and comparison and internet" yields over 1000 results.
Side note: How can a patent with over 20 references be considered new and innovative? Seriously, that's not genius or inspiration, it's adding 1+1. Looking through the software patents, it's a joke that most of them got granted - the Cheif Patent Officer must be Obvious Guy.
It's only a felony if they get convicted, and no jury in the land is going to convict a black dude that raped a drunken ho who was spooging out her boobies for even the minors to the world to see. That's why we have juries -- to provide a check on the government.
I don't give a rats ass if it was a newspaper. They openly broke the law to get their story, and they should get done for it like anyone non-media (ie, lower political embarresment capability) person would.
If they had quietly said to the school, "We've heard of/found a security flaw and if you don't fix it for the students asap, we'll go to press with it" I might have some respect, but they didn't. They got went for gold, and if they go down, then that's fine by me.
I know it's trendy to make French jokes (Freedom jokes?) right now, but while the US is still pissing over Iraq (Oil exports have started again. w00t! Still no real infrastructure for the locals, but hey, we've got the OIL) and even Afghanistan, the French are in the DR Congo fighting for the people there.
Props to the French for getting on with the business where it really counts.
No it isn't. And even if it was, 20 years* of monopoloy on a market is absurd.
From the USPTO website:
Novelty And Non-Obviousness, Conditions For Obtaining A Patent
In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: âoe(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,â or âoe(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . ..â
If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost. The inventor must file on the date of public use or disclosure, however, in order to preserve patent rights in many foreign countries.
Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
First of all, there's the huge problem of how you're supposed to store hydrogen onboard your car.
Rubbish. LPG and CNG have pioneered much of this. We've been carting volatile gases around for ages with minimal problems. I'd much rather have a gas cylinder holding compressed H2 than the thinwall steel or plastic tank holding the petrol in my car currently.
Secondly, there's the problem of fuel distribution.
There's lots of ways. One, and the most likely, is to store the H2 in an Metal Matrix. I don't have the densities on hand, but IIRC, you can get MORE H2 into a solid, than you can fit in the same space as a gas. Just truck it in, and release the gas at pump time. Another option is real-time hydrolysis. Just split water at pump time. No big deal.
The free market will sort these problems out, just as soon as the economic need arises. A little Govt help in the mean time isn't such a bad thing though.
Stop being such a Doubting Thomas. Everything significantly new and innovative was seen as "a curiosity" when first developed.
If the EFF has the sack to set up a fund specifically for combating the MAFIAA, I'll happily donate. If Jordan can get 10 grand in donations for giving in to them, I suspect the EFF could do very well.
If the boycott is going to be big enough to leave a dent, the media will pick it up when they discuss the sales going down.
I beg to differ.
The "media" is instrinsically linked to the, um, media industries which these clowns claim to represent. Haven't you noticed the way TV plays movies by say Tom Cruise right before a new Tom Cruise movie comes out on the big screen, for example? Or that TV, Radio and News agencies are often owned by a few large corporations? I suspect there may be some small comment about any "dent" but don't expect it to be front page or on CNN news.
Industries like the RIAA and music distributors are using a model that doesn't work anymore. Technology has made them redundant. All you need to play recorded music is to have a copy of it. Obvious enough, but only recently has the media carrying the music itself become irrelevant.
Time ago, that copy came on vinyl, then tape, then CD. Fine and dandy, and the record companies supported this customer demand fairly well (not really music companies - the label and the artist was a different thing). They progressed through the different media and made a ton of money.
So here we are in 2003, and people still want music, but many of us don't need or even want a CD to hold our copy of the music - we just want the music!
That's what the record industry can't handle. Their distribution and business model needs to be overhauled. They need to reshape themselves into pure production and marketing houses, but get the hell out of the distribution game. If they were smart, they'd sell "per song" to Amazon, or whoever, and do it just like iTunes does. Hell, you could set up terminals in CD-Stores for punters to grab the tracks they want directly to their iPod and then pay at the counter.
P2P has always been there - we used to swap tapes and dubs back in primary school years ago - so I don't buy the "Napster is Killing Us" lines. If they play the game right, people won't need to scour the net to find their favourite tracks in high quality - they'll just dial up Warner Music, or the 50c website or whatever and download it. I'm sure some payment method could be handled, say a monthly account type of thing (eg, pay up purchases on the 20th), or an online version of EFT-POS to avoid CC charges.
It's not that difficult, but these cats seem to be shit-scared of making the necessary changes
Out of the box, it doesn't, but it's no biggie to integrate the two of them.
My thoughts on the watcher-watching involve a P2P scheme. Each kernel knows about the processes it's running, and if it knows about the other kernel which is running the parallel process, the two can compare results. If it's good (eg, they concur), they send the result back to the process owner. If not, maybe try again, or migrate one or both processes to different nodes and mark the current one(s) are bad.
I think hardware is the only way to get real non-redundant process switching. Otherwise it's a matter of software dealing with problems "after the fact". Maybe something could be done with processes checkpointing across the network, or even something mad like STR in real-time, but man, the traffic generated would get huge and latency may be a problem. But if that's works as a concept, there's no reason you couldn't run a separate fault tolerance channel over iSCSI or Firewire or whatever.
Because it's not sustainable. The economy is pretty soft already, other previously non-competitive nations (India, Eastern-Bloc, much of Asia) are gaining ground, and the EU seems to be getting itself economically together too.
Adding the artifical barriers and so on might help domestic market competitiveness, but when you import more than you export, that doesn't help the overall trade balance. And as other markets intrude on previously US dominant markets, the deficit increases.
I could be wrong of course, and the next 10 years might bring revolutionary advances in low-cost technology (real New Stuff, not just funky miniaturisation) and a dramatic reduction in pollution, waste, and even consumerism. I hope that happens.
That's why I added the "Maybe".:-P. I'm just saying there's other markets, and introducing tarrifs may not necessarily be a big thing for the supplier.
I dunno, but the way to really hurt these guys is to demolish their stock price. That can only be done with information being sent to the market, and most investors don't give a toss about us geeks. IBM on the other hand, now they could do some PR damage...
You mean like an LTSP server which is actually an OpenMosix cluster?
I don't think you'll get 100%, but possibly a "modified" version that generates paired processes and compares function returns are equal on each call... Granted, that's not switching but is actually redundancy, and therefore more expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
My first thought was, Hang on - SCO will sue them too. But then I thought, if HP has a SCO license used for HP-UX, presumably that license can be used for Linux too when sold by HP?
If that's the case, is this a cunning plan to take Linux from the masses and place it firmly into corporate ownership? Of course, if the GPL is legally valid, as soon as HP or anyone sells it it's free again, but it just seems very very odd timing.
/me puts tinfoil undies on
No empire lasts forever, are the masses at the gates of the castle yet?
No, but the masses have surrounded the castle of Gates!
Well, I don't think it'll go down like that. I mean, sure, Software Images didn't get the contract for 500 CDs, but someone else (like Stebbing Recording Ltd?) did and they probably made a buck out of it. I think it is Bill that needs to watch his back, lest the a flock of hungry penguins eat all the herring while he's busy throwing FUD into the media.
Silly little companies like SI need to go out of business. It sounds like they're being MS-NZ's little bitch, and while that's good for the moment (if you like biting the pillow, that is), I don't expect they'll get any OSS business in the future. Is that a big thing? Yes, because that's the direction the market is moving and they've just blown themselves out of that game.
"I will note that the SEC does require private disclosure to the SEC about the more serious hacks that occur, but nothing and I repeat nothing ever gets out to the public."
Hmm.
Bank X: Hey, SEC, we lost these punter's money.
SEC: Um, OK. Don't let it happen again.
Bank X: Uh, sure. No problem.
SEC: Fancy a game of golf?
Private disclosure to the SEC is all well and good from a keep-it-to-ourselves-and-the-boys-but-don't-tell-t he-people-whose-money-it-was view of disclosure, but hopefully this new bill will force disclosure to the actual customers who provide funds for these companies. Something tells me it won't be that easy though.
Yup.
How about if your local bank didn't lock it's safe at night, and used shitty supermarket padlocks on the doors? Then didn't tell you that people broke in occasionally when no-one was looking, but quietly increased your fees to cover the losses? Sound reasonable? No, of course it doesn't, but it's not far off the level of security some clowns put online. Personally, I'd like to see the sysadmins name posted in the notices too. :-D
Imagine if these were physical break-ins rather than electronic ones. The money's all the same, the only difference is that until now, it didn't make the evening news. It's about time it stopped being swept under the carpet.
Probably. But the catch is that it should really cost a whole lot less, once the improvements are in place.
It's commonly speculated that huge numbers of hacks go unreported, particularly in the financial sector. If the result of having to own up about it is an increase in security (to improve company image as a result of not being owned so often), I would expect that related losses would go down considerably. If nothing else, the insurance underwriters should reduce costs for those who make improvements, and increase those who don't. It's in everbodies interests to make companies accountable for hacks, and for them to fix the problems. I think any bleating about costs going up will just be an excuse to fleece the consumer over a longer-term.
Now that 3D is really coming to mobile devices, plenty of people will get first-hand experience of emulating floating point for the first time since the 80's. :-)
I don't think so. Enough research has been done into using 3D hardware as an general purpose FPU that the next generation of PDA display chips will probably take care of this anyway (if needed at all). If the choice is between an FPU for software 3D vs real hardware 3D, PC history has shown that the better answer is the latter.
It's not merely "fluff", it's supporting Slashdot advertisers! Providing NYT links when other non-reg links are available is no coincidence.
Perhaps, but if your lappy gets compromised, would you rather it's running Windows, or a tricked out OpenBSD system?
I suspect it's already been done. A quick USPTO search on "software and price and comparison and internet" yields over 1000 results.
Side note: How can a patent with over 20 references be considered new and innovative? Seriously, that's not genius or inspiration, it's adding 1+1. Looking through the software patents, it's a joke that most of them got granted - the Cheif Patent Officer must be Obvious Guy.
It's only a felony if they get convicted, and no jury in the land is going to convict a black dude that raped a drunken ho who was spooging out her boobies for even the minors to the world to see. That's why we have juries -- to provide a check on the government.
I don't give a rats ass if it was a newspaper. They openly broke the law to get their story, and they should get done for it like anyone non-media (ie, lower political embarresment capability) person would.
If they had quietly said to the school, "We've heard of/found a security flaw and if you don't fix it for the students asap, we'll go to press with it" I might have some respect, but they didn't. They got went for gold, and if they go down, then that's fine by me.
Any word on G5 Xserves?
Ever been there, AC?
I know it's trendy to make French jokes (Freedom jokes?) right now, but while the US is still pissing over Iraq (Oil exports have started again. w00t! Still no real infrastructure for the locals, but hey, we've got the OIL) and even Afghanistan, the French are in the DR Congo fighting for the people there.
Props to the French for getting on with the business where it really counts.
And No, I'm not European.
No it isn't. And even if it was, 20 years* of monopoloy on a market is absurd.
From the USPTO website:
* Typical life time of patent
Rubbish. LPG and CNG have pioneered much of this. We've been carting volatile gases around for ages with minimal problems. I'd much rather have a gas cylinder holding compressed H2 than the thinwall steel or plastic tank holding the petrol in my car currently.
Secondly, there's the problem of fuel distribution.There's lots of ways. One, and the most likely, is to store the H2 in an Metal Matrix. I don't have the densities on hand, but IIRC, you can get MORE H2 into a solid, than you can fit in the same space as a gas. Just truck it in, and release the gas at pump time. Another option is real-time hydrolysis. Just split water at pump time. No big deal.
The free market will sort these problems out, just as soon as the economic need arises. A little Govt help in the mean time isn't such a bad thing though.
Stop being such a Doubting Thomas. Everything significantly new and innovative was seen as "a curiosity" when first developed.
If the EFF has the sack to set up a fund specifically for combating the MAFIAA, I'll happily donate. If Jordan can get 10 grand in donations for giving in to them, I suspect the EFF could do very well.
Disclaimer: Yes, I know I should donate anyway...
If the boycott is going to be big enough to leave a dent, the media will pick it up when they discuss the sales going down.
I beg to differ.
The "media" is instrinsically linked to the, um, media industries which these clowns claim to represent. Haven't you noticed the way TV plays movies by say Tom Cruise right before a new Tom Cruise movie comes out on the big screen, for example? Or that TV, Radio and News agencies are often owned by a few large corporations? I suspect there may be some small comment about any "dent" but don't expect it to be front page or on CNN news.
Industries like the RIAA and music distributors are using a model that doesn't work anymore. Technology has made them redundant. All you need to play recorded music is to have a copy of it. Obvious enough, but only recently has the media carrying the music itself become irrelevant.
Time ago, that copy came on vinyl, then tape, then CD. Fine and dandy, and the record companies supported this customer demand fairly well (not really music companies - the label and the artist was a different thing). They progressed through the different media and made a ton of money.
So here we are in 2003, and people still want music, but many of us don't need or even want a CD to hold our copy of the music - we just want the music!
That's what the record industry can't handle. Their distribution and business model needs to be overhauled. They need to reshape themselves into pure production and marketing houses, but get the hell out of the distribution game. If they were smart, they'd sell "per song" to Amazon, or whoever, and do it just like iTunes does. Hell, you could set up terminals in CD-Stores for punters to grab the tracks they want directly to their iPod and then pay at the counter.
P2P has always been there - we used to swap tapes and dubs back in primary school years ago - so I don't buy the "Napster is Killing Us" lines. If they play the game right, people won't need to scour the net to find their favourite tracks in high quality - they'll just dial up Warner Music, or the 50c website or whatever and download it. I'm sure some payment method could be handled, say a monthly account type of thing (eg, pay up purchases on the 20th), or an online version of EFT-POS to avoid CC charges.
It's not that difficult, but these cats seem to be shit-scared of making the necessary changes
Well, it keeps you in a job.
You can create all the software you want, but without the sales people to sell it, it doesn't put food on the table.
/me imagines geek on street with "Will Code for Food" sign...
Out of the box, it doesn't, but it's no biggie to integrate the two of them.
My thoughts on the watcher-watching involve a P2P scheme. Each kernel knows about the processes it's running, and if it knows about the other kernel which is running the parallel process, the two can compare results. If it's good (eg, they concur), they send the result back to the process owner. If not, maybe try again, or migrate one or both processes to different nodes and mark the current one(s) are bad.
I think hardware is the only way to get real non-redundant process switching. Otherwise it's a matter of software dealing with problems "after the fact". Maybe something could be done with processes checkpointing across the network, or even something mad like STR in real-time, but man, the traffic generated would get huge and latency may be a problem. But if that's works as a concept, there's no reason you couldn't run a separate fault tolerance channel over iSCSI or Firewire or whatever.
Just ideas...
Because it's not sustainable. The economy is pretty soft already, other previously non-competitive nations (India, Eastern-Bloc, much of Asia) are gaining ground, and the EU seems to be getting itself economically together too.
Adding the artifical barriers and so on might help domestic market competitiveness, but when you import more than you export, that doesn't help the overall trade balance. And as other markets intrude on previously US dominant markets, the deficit increases.
I could be wrong of course, and the next 10 years might bring revolutionary advances in low-cost technology (real New Stuff, not just funky miniaturisation) and a dramatic reduction in pollution, waste, and even consumerism. I hope that happens.
That's why I added the "Maybe". :-P. I'm just saying there's other markets, and introducing tarrifs may not necessarily be a big thing for the supplier.
I dunno, but the way to really hurt these guys is to demolish their stock price. That can only be done with information being sent to the market, and most investors don't give a toss about us geeks. IBM on the other hand, now they could do some PR damage...
You mean like an LTSP server which is actually an OpenMosix cluster?
I don't think you'll get 100%, but possibly a "modified" version that generates paired processes and compares function returns are equal on each call... Granted, that's not switching but is actually redundancy, and therefore more expensive.