The amazing thing (for me) is that I've now dumped a Xandros installation onto four people (two home users, two business users) who were used to Windows 98 and XP previously. It took me exactly 1 hour to install each system, entirely painless except for a NIC issue on two notebooks, solved by using a PCcard NIC.
Xandros is Debian, and has slightly outdated versions of some packages, so I've been updating OpenOffice to the latest release for the two business users.
After several months of use, one PC crashed, I think because the guy was just switching it off without doing a shutdown.
And for the rest? No complaints except one person who said they couldn't install Kazaa:)
It just works. And this is truly amazing, even installing Windows is more painful.
Technically speaking, no, and I have the certificate to prove it. But I assume you're being metaphorical. Care to explain your logic?
The funny thing about "desktop computing" is that despite 20 years of relentless progress, what the vast majority of home and business users need and want is quite simple. The true requirement for a mass-market PC (80-90% of the PCs in existence) is very simple: surf web, read email, play media, make documents, chat. Make it cheap, fast, simple, and safe, and you have your market and your product. Period.
In fact, it does a significantly better job of this than Google does.
A robust Internet memory would require three or four such archives under different political control (the Way Back machine itself depends on the Smithsonian and thus possibly on funds coming from the US government.)
I'd like to see net archives made by the British Library, by the Library of Congress, by the UN, by the EU, etc.
The "Liberal Media" is a myth. It used to be like that, but over the last 10 years the bulk of the media in the US, and in fact many countries has ended up in the hands of a small group of very wealthy men.
It should not be surprising that these men have a rather more conservative point of view than the press owners who they bought out.
By and large, today's media speaks for the establishment, and in the US the establishment is a Republican one.
There is an excellent article in the Economist about this, unfortunately for subscribers only. Here is a pertinent quote:
A case in point is the near-total secrecy in which the Department of Homeland Security was hatched. No cabinet secretary was consulted. Nor were most senior advisers. The largest government reorganisation in half a century, involving huge numbers of civil servants and tricky questions of government relations, was decided upon by a handful of people (originally four, with aides) and without serious consultation with Congress. Did that improve the quality of decisions?
The White House relies more than many previous administrations on the power of "top secret", and it should surprise no-one if they extend legislation like the Patriot Act into civil domains such as the Internet.
The connection is not made accidentally, it's been slipped in there expressly and it shows that some of the same people pushing for DRM are also strongly opposed to free/open source software.
Expect to hear linkage between piracy and Linux next.
It's your standard propaganda battle, nothing unusual about it.
Writer, peering into empty glass, "Yeah, guess so. Another beer?"
Grey hat: "It's on me. Look, I need you to throw in some comments about open source. My bosses say if I can get the words 'piracy' and 'open source software license' into the same web article, I get a thousand. I'll split it 50-50 with you"
Writer: "Ng did mention he studied software law. I'm sure that includes open source licenses. Sounds OK."
The grey hat is Michael Speck, who has provided this delicious quote to explain why the forces of law and order have to immediately jail every DJ and MP3 swapper in town:
"Music piracy helps finance organised crime and international terrorism."
Now it all makes sense, huh? Those underground DJs were actually working for Bin Laden in between mixing Mary J. Blige.
Viruses don't work like organic viruses, but viruses, trojans, worms, spammers together work like parasites, and this is not an analogy, but intended as a literal statement. They represent a parasitical strategy which succeeds because the 'honest' strategies do not protect themselves enough.
For good, or evil. The bugs in your stomach took many million years to go from deadly to cooperative, and they don't preclude a zillion other bugs that see you as a walking buffet.
Our physical biological ecosystems represent 3 billion years of massively parallel real-time calculations. What happens in the natural world is not particularly 'inefficient' or 'limited', it's just the conclusion of long and unrelenting application of natural laws.
What we're seeing in the Net today is the evidence that some of those same laws also apply.
The future has two faces. One is total and utter chaos, continuous warfare. The other is a balanced system obeying natural laws. The same thing, two points of view. What I'm proposing is that by understanding natural laws we can better understand the Net and where it's going.
And since this is the next question, the basic law of nature is that (species/algorithms/protocols/strategies) compete for finite resources. Evolution is driven by the selection on replicators, i.e. each generation consists of the descendants of those (species/alorithms/protocols/strategies) that survived the last time.
One of the most successful strategies in natural and arificial societies is simply to steal resources from another. Species/etc. that don't evolve defenses against such behaviour die out.
And one of the most solid defenses against a certain class of living parasite (microorganisms also called viruses) is to switch the locks of the immune system each generation through a process we call "sex".
So, my long-winded conclusion is that our systems do not need DRM, they need to get out and date.
Put enough people into a system and it starts to behave like an organic system rather than individuals each doing their thing.
Viruses, worms, trojans are way past the point of being expressions of individualistic derangement.
They represent the nasty side of the biology of the Net: the fact that any simulated or real ecosystem produces more parasites than non-parasites, and that non-parasites have to spend a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs.
Two decades is not significant in itself, but it should be a stark warning that viruses are not going to go away, that the Net is turning "wild", and that we need something other than daily antivirus updates to keep our systems safe.
1. Microsoft will find a partner willing to invest in designing a new generation of hardware.
2. The product will start to become a reality.
3. Microsoft will pull out of the deal, citing "differences" and go into the hardware business itself, suddenly having aquired lots of new technology and staff.
4. Lawyers everywhere will rejoice once again.
Ah, but the lure of big money will find a sucker every time. Microsoft is like a huge fat 419 scam artist. "Have $500bn sitting in games market, need someone to facilitate extraction, will give 10%".
80 degrees celsius, quite attainable when you leave a bottle of water in the African sun for a few hours. Infrared heats the water, UV attacks the bacteria both directly (literally, the UV breaks down their cell walls), and indirectly by producing peroxide and other free radicals that sterilise the water.
Of course we'd all rather drink purified water, but most (sadly, most) people living in Africa don't have that choice. It's well-drawn water, often muddy and mixed with low levels faecal bacteria, not a big deal for adults but very harmful for children, who die in shameful numbers from it.
The treatment is known as "sol-air" and depends on UV to create reactive oxygen molecules which kill the worst bacteria.
Yes, it's a technique that has been tested in some of the worst African "shit holes", and produces drinkable water which may not be Evian, but is significantly safer than the alternatives (drinking untreated water).
In most of Africa, electrical means are simply not an option. Sol-air, on the other hand, needs nothing except empty plastic bottles, sunlight (not even direct sunlight), and time. There is no reason why you couldn't build large-scale sol-air purifiers, only it hardly seems worthwhile when you can just as well lay a thousand bottles out on the ground.
And as what is "obvious", I was born in Africa, grew up there, am married to a Congolese woman, and have spent much time in Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Angola, Burkina Faso, Togo, and a few other places that I thankfully forget. Since you asked.
Here is one link on sol-air, there are others if you care to research this.
I was not suggesting a technological fix, but a social one.
Something like this... you can send data through my clearing house. I have a good reputation, let's say AAA, because I'm really strict about who I accept data from. In any period, you can't send more than 20% of the total you've ever sent, and if you abuse my reputation I'll cut you off.
Perhaps I'll ask you to place a financial deposit in case you misbehave.
Clearly, people will pay a premium to have their data sent through the most trusted clearing houses. Abusers will have to pay more, up front and in fees.
Digital signatures can be used to secure the communications between two parties who enter into such an agreement, but they do not create a balanced system in themselves.
This model is actually nice. Perhaps I'll patent it.:)
The Eolas and PanIP cases are exceptional and simply don't relate to the reality of business for most people.
Eolas is backed by the University of California, which has resources far beyond the reach of ordinary entrepreneurs. PanIP is run by patent lawyers, not software engineers or inventors.
The simple but sad truth is that patents (with one or two significant exceptions) are principally used as weapons by which large organizations stop smaller ones from entering their markets with new and innovative technologies.
The only big exception I know of is medicine, where the research process is so costly that patents are a necessary protection.
Software lies at the other extreme: invention is not just cheap, it is the very nature of the business, and patents represent not the amount of innovation a business does, but the amount of money it can pay its patent lawyers.
Software patents (which my discussion is really about) are a minefield: large companies hold portfolios of patents not so much because they need them to produce their products, but because they protect against other patent claims. OK, so our product A infringes on your patent B, well, your products C and D infringe on our patents E and F. Usually settled out of court, and rarely headline news.
Eolas makes no products. PanIP makes no products. They are therefore immune to this counter attack.
But the vast majority of software inventions are produced by people who then try to make money by selling products based on them. And it is these small entrepreneurs who find that the patent system is a knife with no handle: pick it up, and it slices you.
Thomas Woolston is a patent attorney. This is his business. Not a typical small business.
Come on, surely there are counter examples to my wild claim, surely there are small businesses out there that don't have the backing of huge universities, or dedicated patent lawyers...?
Eolas is a good example of a business that does little except pursue patent claims. They were born from a university research team that was based on the concept of seeking and licensing patents.
Hardly a standard model for small businesses, however inventive they may be.
It's significant that Eolas appears to sell nothing except their technology licenses.
As for "one guy", it's Eolas plus the University of California that sued Microsoft, which is anything but a "small business". Eolas is just the commercial arm of what is a large enterprise.
the large corporations are not the ones abusing the patent system - it's that small entrepreneur...
WTF? What the fuckity-fuckity-flying-fuck? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING? OK, must... get... control... again.
Sorry, pal, but you are wrong. Small businesses can neither afford to claim patents nor defend them. The "small entrepreneurs" you are thinking about are firms with good financial backing and a speciality in what amounts to legal extortion. They find a single patent and exploit it. Any realistic small business trying this will soon face the fact that for every one patent they try to enforce, larger and richer companies will come back with five or ten that they have suddenly found.
The patent process claims to be about protecting innovation and invention but in fact it does exactly the opposite - it rewards those who have deep pockets and dedicated lawyers, and punishes those who spend their time really inventing.
This is simple to demonstrate: the companies that exploit "obvious patents" are never small businesses who make other products, they are either huge businesses, or shell companies that do nothing else at all.
And your insulting remarks about "unwashed FSF geeks" are just amazingly rude. You are either just trolling, or truly pathetic and uneducated.
Slashdot Mirror
I will try K3B immediately.
:)
The amazing thing (for me) is that I've now dumped a Xandros installation onto four people (two home users, two business users) who were used to Windows 98 and XP previously. It took me exactly 1 hour to install each system, entirely painless except for a NIC issue on two notebooks, solved by using a PCcard NIC.
Xandros is Debian, and has slightly outdated versions of some packages, so I've been updating OpenOffice to the latest release for the two business users.
After several months of use, one PC crashed, I think because the guy was just switching it off without doing a shutdown.
And for the rest? No complaints except one person who said they couldn't install Kazaa
It just works. And this is truly amazing, even installing Windows is more painful.
Technically speaking, no, and I have the certificate to prove it. But I assume you're being metaphorical. Care to explain your logic?
The funny thing about "desktop computing" is that despite 20 years of relentless progress, what the vast majority of home and business users need and want is quite simple. The true requirement for a mass-market PC (80-90% of the PCs in existence) is very simple: surf web, read email, play media, make documents, chat. Make it cheap, fast, simple, and safe, and you have your market and your product. Period.
The key components are almost there:
- perfect device detection
- modern file manager
- office suites
- smooth browsing
- good email clients
What's missing?
- in-built p2p
- better CD burning tools
- better attachment handling in email
This is from watching people use Xandros over the last 6 months both for business and home.
A home/office distribution built around Debian, OOo, Kmail, Konqueror, and a file manager such as Xandros' is almost exactly perfect.
How long before Google bow to the inevitable and start to exert editorial control over what is cached?
2-4 years, I expect.
Thankfully the Internet Archive is there and also has several instances of the lost page.
In fact, it does a significantly better job of this than Google does.
A robust Internet memory would require three or four such archives under different political control (the Way Back machine itself depends on the Smithsonian and thus possibly on funds coming from the US government.)
I'd like to see net archives made by the British Library, by the Library of Congress, by the UN, by the EU, etc.
The "Liberal Media" is a myth. It used to be like that, but over the last 10 years the bulk of the media in the US, and in fact many countries has ended up in the hands of a small group of very wealthy men.
It should not be surprising that these men have a rather more conservative point of view than the press owners who they bought out.
By and large, today's media speaks for the establishment, and in the US the establishment is a Republican one.
No, definitely not a troll.
There is an excellent article in the Economist about this, unfortunately for subscribers only. Here is a pertinent quote:
A case in point is the near-total secrecy in which the Department of Homeland Security was hatched. No cabinet secretary was consulted. Nor were most senior advisers. The largest government reorganisation in half a century, involving huge numbers of civil servants and tricky questions of government relations, was decided upon by a handful of people (originally four, with aides) and without serious consultation with Congress. Did that improve the quality of decisions?
The White House relies more than many previous administrations on the power of "top secret", and it should surprise no-one if they extend legislation like the Patriot Act into civil domains such as the Internet.
Instant poll:
Who smoked the most crack in 2003?
(_) SCO
(_) Belkin
(_) Verisign
(_) CowboyNeal
(_) *A
(_) All of the above
The connection is not made accidentally, it's been slipped in there expressly and it shows that some of the same people pushing for DRM are also strongly opposed to free/open source software.
Expect to hear linkage between piracy and Linux next.
It's your standard propaganda battle, nothing unusual about it.
Scene inside a smokey pub:
Grey hat: "So, you're writing up on the Ng case?"
Writer, peering into empty glass, "Yeah, guess so. Another beer?"
Grey hat: "It's on me. Look, I need you to throw in some comments about open source. My bosses say if I can get the words 'piracy' and 'open source software license' into the same web article, I get a thousand. I'll split it 50-50 with you"
Writer: "Ng did mention he studied software law. I'm sure that includes open source licenses. Sounds OK."
The grey hat is Michael Speck, who has provided this delicious quote to explain why the forces of law and order have to immediately jail every DJ and MP3 swapper in town:
"Music piracy helps finance organised crime and international terrorism."
Now it all makes sense, huh? Those underground DJs were actually working for Bin Laden in between mixing Mary J. Blige.
Yeah, good going, now the Google cache has also been slashdotted. :)
How long before someone mods it to run Windows?
About 50 years, and then only as punishment for failing second grade OS design basics.
"Model" is more accurate than "analogy".
Viruses don't work like organic viruses, but viruses, trojans, worms, spammers together work like parasites, and this is not an analogy, but intended as a literal statement. They represent a parasitical strategy which succeeds because the 'honest' strategies do not protect themselves enough.
...we, as people, have an almost unlimited power
For good, or evil. The bugs in your stomach took many million years to go from deadly to cooperative, and they don't preclude a zillion other bugs that see you as a walking buffet.
Our physical biological ecosystems represent 3 billion years of massively parallel real-time calculations. What happens in the natural world is not particularly 'inefficient' or 'limited', it's just the conclusion of long and unrelenting application of natural laws.
What we're seeing in the Net today is the evidence that some of those same laws also apply.
The future has two faces. One is total and utter chaos, continuous warfare. The other is a balanced system obeying natural laws. The same thing, two points of view. What I'm proposing is that by understanding natural laws we can better understand the Net and where it's going.
And since this is the next question, the basic law of nature is that (species/algorithms/protocols/strategies) compete for finite resources. Evolution is driven by the selection on replicators, i.e. each generation consists of the descendants of those (species/alorithms/protocols/strategies) that survived the last time.
One of the most successful strategies in natural and arificial societies is simply to steal resources from another. Species/etc. that don't evolve defenses against such behaviour die out.
And one of the most solid defenses against a certain class of living parasite (microorganisms also called viruses) is to switch the locks of the immune system each generation through a process we call "sex".
So, my long-winded conclusion is that our systems do not need DRM, they need to get out and date.
Put enough people into a system and it starts to behave like an organic system rather than individuals each doing their thing.
Viruses, worms, trojans are way past the point of being expressions of individualistic derangement.
They represent the nasty side of the biology of the Net: the fact that any simulated or real ecosystem produces more parasites than non-parasites, and that non-parasites have to spend a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs.
Two decades is not significant in itself, but it should be a stark warning that viruses are not going to go away, that the Net is turning "wild", and that we need something other than daily antivirus updates to keep our systems safe.
1. Microsoft will find a partner willing to invest in designing a new generation of hardware.
2. The product will start to become a reality.
3. Microsoft will pull out of the deal, citing "differences" and go into the hardware business itself, suddenly having aquired lots of new technology and staff.
4. Lawyers everywhere will rejoice once again.
Ah, but the lure of big money will find a sucker every time. Microsoft is like a huge fat 419 scam artist. "Have $500bn sitting in games market, need someone to facilitate extraction, will give 10%".
Thank you very much.
80 degrees celsius, quite attainable when you leave a bottle of water in the African sun for a few hours. Infrared heats the water, UV attacks the bacteria both directly (literally, the UV breaks down their cell walls), and indirectly by producing peroxide and other free radicals that sterilise the water.
Of course we'd all rather drink purified water, but most (sadly, most) people living in Africa don't have that choice. It's well-drawn water, often muddy and mixed with low levels faecal bacteria, not a big deal for adults but very harmful for children, who die in shameful numbers from it.
The treatment is known as "sol-air" and depends on UV to create reactive oxygen molecules which kill the worst bacteria.
Yes, it's a technique that has been tested in some of the worst African "shit holes", and produces drinkable water which may not be Evian, but is significantly safer than the alternatives (drinking untreated water).
In most of Africa, electrical means are simply not an option. Sol-air, on the other hand, needs nothing except empty plastic bottles, sunlight (not even direct sunlight), and time. There is no reason why you couldn't build large-scale sol-air purifiers, only it hardly seems worthwhile when you can just as well lay a thousand bottles out on the ground.
And as what is "obvious", I was born in Africa, grew up there, am married to a Congolese woman, and have spent much time in Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Angola, Burkina Faso, Togo, and a few other places that I thankfully forget. Since you asked.
Here is one link on sol-air, there are others if you care to research this.
I was not suggesting a technological fix, but a social one.
:)
Something like this... you can send data through my clearing house. I have a good reputation, let's say AAA, because I'm really strict about who I accept data from. In any period, you can't send more than 20% of the total you've ever sent, and if you abuse my reputation I'll cut you off.
Perhaps I'll ask you to place a financial deposit in case you misbehave.
Clearly, people will pay a premium to have their data sent through the most trusted clearing houses. Abusers will have to pay more, up front and in fees.
Digital signatures can be used to secure the communications between two parties who enter into such an agreement, but they do not create a balanced system in themselves.
This model is actually nice. Perhaps I'll patent it.
UofC wasn't in on it from the beginning. They only stepped in later.
And then? UC was the patent holder, they tried to license it via Eolas, and then directly when Microsoft refused to play that game.
It should be obvious (and this was my point) that Eolas was anything but "one man against Microsoft".
The Eolas and PanIP cases are exceptional and simply don't relate to the reality of business for most people.
Eolas is backed by the University of California, which has resources far beyond the reach of ordinary entrepreneurs. PanIP is run by patent lawyers, not software engineers or inventors.
The simple but sad truth is that patents (with one or two significant exceptions) are principally used as weapons by which large organizations stop smaller ones from entering their markets with new and innovative technologies.
The only big exception I know of is medicine, where the research process is so costly that patents are a necessary protection.
Software lies at the other extreme: invention is not just cheap, it is the very nature of the business, and patents represent not the amount of innovation a business does, but the amount of money it can pay its patent lawyers.
Software patents (which my discussion is really about) are a minefield: large companies hold portfolios of patents not so much because they need them to produce their products, but because they protect against other patent claims. OK, so our product A infringes on your patent B, well, your products C and D infringe on our patents E and F. Usually settled out of court, and rarely headline news.
Eolas makes no products. PanIP makes no products. They are therefore immune to this counter attack.
But the vast majority of software inventions are produced by people who then try to make money by selling products based on them. And it is these small entrepreneurs who find that the patent system is a knife with no handle: pick it up, and it slices you.
Here are some references, including an explanation by UC why it joined the fight.
Google on: eolas university california lawsuit
That should do it.
Thomas Woolston is a patent attorney. This is his business. Not a typical small business.
Come on, surely there are counter examples to my wild claim, surely there are small businesses out there that don't have the backing of huge universities, or dedicated patent lawyers...?
Eolas is a good example of a business that does little except pursue patent claims. They were born from a university research team that was based on the concept of seeking and licensing patents.
Hardly a standard model for small businesses, however inventive they may be.
It's significant that Eolas appears to sell nothing except their technology licenses.
As for "one guy", it's Eolas plus the University of California that sued Microsoft, which is anything but a "small business". Eolas is just the commercial arm of what is a large enterprise.
the large corporations are not the ones abusing the patent system - it's that small entrepreneur...
WTF? What the fuckity-fuckity-flying-fuck? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING? OK, must... get... control... again.
Sorry, pal, but you are wrong. Small businesses can neither afford to claim patents nor defend them. The "small entrepreneurs" you are thinking about are firms with good financial backing and a speciality in what amounts to legal extortion. They find a single patent and exploit it. Any realistic small business trying this will soon face the fact that for every one patent they try to enforce, larger and richer companies will come back with five or ten that they have suddenly found.
The patent process claims to be about protecting innovation and invention but in fact it does exactly the opposite - it rewards those who have deep pockets and dedicated lawyers, and punishes those who spend their time really inventing.
This is simple to demonstrate: the companies that exploit "obvious patents" are never small businesses who make other products, they are either huge businesses, or shell companies that do nothing else at all.
And your insulting remarks about "unwashed FSF geeks" are just amazingly rude. You are either just trolling, or truly pathetic and uneducated.
I'll settle for troll.