How are we supposed to take seriously a journalist or analyst or whatever who admits he can't see the Open Source forest because of the zealot trees.
I particularly like how he asks us to put ourselves in his shoes and think about who we would let determine our opinion, followed almost immediately by a gushing review of what constitues a Pro, and the observation that these are the kind of people he wants working for him or that he would work for...
Umm, Mr Enderle, if you can't figure out who you should be letting determine your position, especially when you worship the pros for their objectivity, then perhaps the Linux zealot isn't the biggest part of our problem. Perhaps the biggest part of our problem is ingorant journalist/analysts who can't be bothered to do their (censored) job right in the first place!
Same shit, different day.
Sad to say, but I'm almost weepy I'm having such a deja vu moment......Or for the halcyon days when Apple and M$ were at each other's throats, and Linux slipped quietly through the fracas...
But, the best part of the whole article was at the bottom...
M$ Word for OS X apparently doesn't have the word competetive in the default dictionary! I wonder if "unfair trade practices" and Microsoft in the same sentence set off the grammar checker?!
If everyone felt this way, we wouldn't be having this discussion, since civilization would never have advanced to the point where/. could happen.
Contrary to your belief, if you and I prevent spam from hitting our inbox, then bully for you and me, but we haven't done a damn thing to eliminate those useless emails from being created in the first place. Nor is Spam the only manifestation of the lack of responsibility. Mal-ware in all it's forms is another manifestation. Protecting myself from these things is all well and good, but it is not the sum total of the effect. M$ had to protect their update site from Blaster, that had a spill-over effect to thousands of users, some of whom also protected themselves. Self-protection does not completely eliminate the problem.
I'm really tired of the position you appear to support, it shows no sophistication, or recognition of several thousand years of human development. Without responsibilities, rights and freedoms are the core problem. Every civilization in the world had had to learn to check the rights and freedoms of individuals from the lowliest peasant to the loftiest king, with responsibilities. Those that have failed to do so, well we don't have many around any more, they tend to consume themsleves, or are supplanted by societies with these constructs. This is a simple evolutionary progression, played out thousands of times in our collective history. Failure to recognize that the web is simply a larger manifestation of the same, and a refusal to apply the time-tested methodology for preventing such an extinction will only hasten the inevitable.
Wether you want it or not, it is likely to happen. By refusing to accept that properly handled it is a necessary safeguard, you merely open the door wider for those who want to completely control the web.
In other words, your own position on this is the thing most likely to lose you the freedom you have, and the freedom we could retain if we all grew up and accepted the fact that it will be regulated, and no amount of whining about it will change.
"Irresponsible behaviors" is nanny-state code for "That guy over there is doing something with his freedom that annoys me, so make him stop."
No, that's the functional definition of rights and freedoms in the US Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the similar documents of other democracries. (Well, if by annoying you mean abridging my rights) So, if you accept that the world is not going to be perfect, you can at least be reasonable and select the imperfections you can live with, rather than rejecting them all blindly and ending up with imperfections you can't. It's called compromise, another key to a functional society, and wait, let me guess, something else you can't abide by...
Mod me down for trolling, but if everyone is entitled to a wrong opinion, I'm entitled to tell 'em when they are!
I'd cautiously speculate that maybe they did some optimizations, ripping out unnecessary fluff and such, but IANMD...
Freedom without repsonsibility
on
Trusted Computing
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Those who care about freedom cannot just sit back and assume that because the net is fairly free now, it always will be. Eternal vigiliance is the price.
There is an additional price though, responsiblity.
Unlimited freedom without repsonsibility is equivalent to anarchy, and the net is as close to a functional implementation of anarchy that the world has seen. However, this does not imply that what we have is an ideal. Far from it in fact.
Spam is one immediately obvious result of this freedom. Give yourself a couple minutes and you can think of several other less than desirable outcomes of all this freedom.
By tempering freedoms with responsibility, we can have the free flow of ideas we all have come to expect from the web, but without propogating all those nuisance aspect of the beast.
Unfortunately that means regulation. But regulation is not feasible in the traditional sense. The internet is a global phenomenon, and while some corners of the world act to supress portions of the traffic, by and large the web is a building block of a truly global society.
But a society must have laws to function and sustain itself. In ten short years my own usage patterns have drastically changed, as well as the usages patterns of many of my peers.
Remember the good old days? I remember not having multiple email accounts, or any of a number of other measures I routinely undertake to weed out various garbage I don't want as part of my on-line experience. We've all had to take these measures, to some degree or another.
My question is, is that the way it should be? Is spam and it's unsavoury tribe really an acceptable cost for the freedoms entailed? Most, if not all of us have extreme antipathy to spam. It's the old adage about a right is such only until it infringes on the rights of others. I feel that spam has truly infringed on my web experience, most of us should feel the same way. Even if the measures to avoid it personally are trivial, should the majority who don't want spam have to make such changes to allow safeguard the freedoms of a few individuals who refuse to honor our freedoms?
Regulation is probably inevitable, and in fact is being attempted by governments today. I think this is the bigger concern. If the web is to be regulated, such regulation needs to come from within. The danger is that the regulation will be forced from outside. The reason this will occur is because we have subjugated responsibilites to freedoms. As long as this continues to be the case there will be an increasing impetus to force such regulation on the web. The problem is that the source of such change will be the very people we don't want to make the changes happen. Big business and government.
And it makes sense, why spend money and time and effort dealing with the effects of this (relatively) unabridged freedom with virus scanners, and spam blocking services Et. Al. when the same time and monies and effort can be used to eliminate the problem. For a multinational corporation, it is a relatively trivial exercise to lobby for the legislative changes required. Once that legal environment exists, it becomes easier to implement the rest of your solution. If you can get a couple of your peers to play ball...
I leave the hardest issue for the reader, how do we encourage those who threaten our freedoms with their irresponsible behaviours to behave responsibly?
Sun makes a compelling point. Upping processor performance in a vacuum is not the be all, end all to improve overall system speeds. Upping processor performance in view of the limitations of the whole system makes sense.
While this is only a white paper, not an actual chip release, it does have some very promising potential, particularly for web servers and their ilk.
<sucking_up> I'm not so sure about the editors galss dick sucking either. After all, we only/. a site while the post is up, we/. the editors all day, every day. </sucking_up>
There are two builds so marked, one with XFT as well, the other built by gcc-2.95.
Check the actual downloads page:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/download/
...that folks under-estimate the power of zealotry.
Umm. I think I'd offer some pretty good odds against BSD dying kids.
Lets count the things BSD has going for it:
1)OSX - regardless of how you view it, it is BSD for the LCD.
2)Debian GNU/NetBSD - Debian + GNU + BSD, 'nuff said
3)Debian GNU/FreeBSD - ibid
4)The BSD license - wether you live and die by the GPL or not, the BSD license is a fundamentally healthy thing. The more diverse licensing practices available, the greater the chance of one being acceptable to any given organization. Diversity is essentially a healthy thing.
5)There are a whole smeg-load of web servers out there which use BSD. It works, it's reliable and as long as that is the case, it will still be used.
6)Zealotry.
Personally, I think BSD is relevant, and necessary. Even if you don't like their kernel, there is alot of code that has come out of the BSD people which we still use. Net4.0 and ssh being two quick and easy ones.
That and I find it unseemly for these two camps to waste time sniping at each other, when there are fouler fish in the pond.
But, hey, if occasional code bloat, or the occasional insertion of inferior code is the worst offense that Open Source is quilty of, (which certainly seems to be the case) then things aren't too bad, so long as it is caught and fixed.
Hard to put any credence in the SCO claims when you have folk bringing out examples of code removed for aesthetic reasons. At least we can establish that we do review our code, and regularly. Not something SCO can claim.
If you left your house door open and somebody entered and made a mess in your house (or worse!) then who is to blame? Who is at fault? If you have a lock available to you then you use it. The same thing goes for your emails.
Ahh, but wether you leave the door locked or unlocked does not change that 'somebody' committed break and enter, or at the very least tresspassing.
Which is not to comment on the stupidity required to not use the available lock.
This, I think, is the best analogy I've seen yet. Break and enter is illegal, and the law is enforceable, yet we all have door locks. Many of us probably have home alarm systems as well. Do these facts warrant a relaxing of the law on break and enter? Were no such law in place, would the prevalence of door locks and the existence of alarm systems mitigate the need for such a law?
Likewise, with spam a multi-tiered approach is required. End users need to learn to "lock the door" and install an "alarm system." But, when the spammer figures out how to pick your lock and cirumvent your alarm, (and they will...) we still need to have some sort of recourse. Nor should the ISP's get off scott free, many are accomplices to this "crime" be it through negligence or lack of awareness.
Any solution which does not address the entire scope of the issue is likely not to be sufficient unto the task.
But, the bigger question is if spam should be a crime. Is spamming sufficiently immoral or disruptive, or what-have-you to warrant legislation. This is the important question, and the answer needs to be well thought out. Beyond the law of unintended consequences, there is the feasibility of enforcement to consider.
Laws are there to be dodged and abused. Community cooperation and prevention strengthens us.
I really get disturbed by this one. First of all, the assertion that laws are to be dodged and abused, even the author doesn't truly believe, unless he is/.ing from prison. C'mon, if you really believed that, you would dodge and abuse the laws, and eventually you'd have got caught.
The second assertion is part of the solution for sure. But, more importantly, is the correct use of that co-operation. The community should be co-operating with the legislators to determine if a law is necessary, and in the writing and amending of such a law. Co-operation as an alternative to being involved in that needed process smacks of vigilantism, which is not going to alleviate this problem, but rather escalate it.
The big question though, is such a law enforceable? Certainly not if we view the law as something to be abused and dodged. Certainly not if we are just going to worry about our litle corner of the briar patch.
We continually are hearing about yes, it was SysV code, yes it was PD, but we removed it because there was allready _BETTER_ code in place in the kernel...
I've seen comments to this effect repeatedly now. This ought to be a revelation to a some folks (unfortunately not the ones at SCO...)
What the whole thing boils down to in a nutshell:
We didn't use your code, because your code bites.
Which leads to Sensitive's corollary:
Why would I steal SCO's code after I've used SCO's product based on that code?
Ave Linus, constructuri te salutant! (I think I blew the tense there...)
Then CAGW has a point. But that isn't the case, limiting future software acquisitions to Open Source does not reduce the playing field to a single vendor. The important thing about this, it does not reduce any segment of your purchasing to a single vendor. Using appplications for M$ (only) may give you a broad depth of application vendors, but inly one OS vendor. Even if you look soley at Linux as the OS, you still have a plethora of vendors to obtain your OS from.
Nevermind the costs involved should you need massive revisions to your closed source product...
Umm, Reverend, yer a preachin to the choir there son...
So, not only do Ren and SCO needs new CEOs...
on
SCO's Plan Examined
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· Score: 1
I think you hit it right on the head. The 'average' CEO I've dealt with is certainly not equipped to assess this issue and react accordingly. This is a multi-disciplinary process, requiring analysis by a group of some technologically-savvy and some legally-savvy individuals, and one accountant. Personally, my input around the shop has been limited to the technology side of things.
For us, the issue has consistently come down to the fact that OSS has become a major part of our infrastructure. Sure we could replace all the OSS stuff we use with commerc*al software to accomplish the same task, but the cost is prohibitive. So far, our CEO has come down on the side that our responsibility to our stockholders is best executed by not needlessly incurring costs to migrate to alternatives. Obviously the legal-eagles in our little focus group could up the pressure to make change, if the lay of the land were to change. But failing that, we see no reason to undertake the migration plan.
It is important to have that migration plan though. We needed to know that we could migrate if need be. We further needed to know the cost of such migration (in time and money) to correctly assess the impact of such a move. We needed to have that safety net should the unthinkable happen and SCO prevails.
Your CEO (and I know I'm teching someone's grandmother to write #include statements...) is furiously displaying the same sort of vaunted executive expertise that got Ren in bed with SCO.
But ask any one of these over-tailored, under-achieving paragons of the corporate ladder the secret to attaining positions of such lofty and virtuous responsibility:
Delegate down, follow up, follow up , follow up.
Oh, really?
I contract for a medium+ marketing company. It's a really mixed bag, Linux, HP/UX, M$, The three letter acronym ending in O which I don't use in polite company any more.
My primary task is supposed to be software development. What I actually do breaks down to:
1) Slap down the intranet people, you can fill in the appropriate group in your ogranization, but in mine it the intranet developers who keep trying to foist off more Redmond Refuse in our environs.
2) Slap down the IT people, mostly for listening to the intranet group, second most likely, for not keeping decent contractors in place who actually knew WTF they were doing (sic. me.)
3) Slap down the boss, mostly for knuckling under to upper management when they make stupid requests.
4) Slap down the Help Desk, mostly for advising users to do _THE EXACT PROCEDURE I INDICATED SHOULD NOT BE DONE IN AN EMAIL 2 WEEKS AGO_.
5) Slap down the Help Desk Manager for hiring MCSE's and other functional illiterates for the Help Desk.
6) Slap down one of several phone companies, usually for trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
7) Walking around muttering about the incompetents I am forced to work with, or more accurately around.
8) (Recently) Read/.
9) Flatline a dev workstation, usually for the express purpose of installing some OS I want to play with, which will never see the production environment.
Of the 9, three are self-imposed, partly for my sanity, partly as a knee-jerk reaction to the other 6.
At least in my enivronment, the biggest impediment to my producticity and efficiency is the company itself!
It's all well and good to legislate whatever your little heart desires. But, if the legislation is unenforceable, or a loose framework of loopholes...
As an example, when the FTC introduced the centralized DNC list, and introduced new legislation setting requirements for telemarketing. One company manufacturing servers for this activity re-coded their application to work through the loopholes in the law. Another company in the same industry worked to ensure that their equipment would operate within the law.
The point is this, without the legislation, neither company would likely have altered their products. The legislation did produce some action on the part of both companies. However, in all cases the reaction was not the intended or desired reaction.
Yes, this is a technological problem, and must be fixed that way, occasionally though legislation is the event which provides the impetus of change.
Given some of the posts I've seen (and written)...
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
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· Score: 1
...this is probably entirely due to/..
Mental Note: Never end a sentence with/., the extra period makes it look like you're a dyslexic sending the reader up a directory.
But, my question is, if we are all so damn good at fixing letter transpositions and mispellings in-line as we read, and given English is about as complex as any language, artificial or otherwise, gets...
I think I can put a new spin on the whole RIAA mess:
Let:
Software developers == Song Writers
Open Source Movement == Kazaa Et. Al.
SCO == RIAA
Now write the appropriate gawk program and apply to your favorite SCO press release...
Humour aside, the situations aren't that different. SCO much like RIAA is a third party when we really look at the genesis of either set of property.
However, there are still differences in this comparison. Open Source Software as a movement has little in common with Kazaa Et. Al. OSS is a body of people who are motivated by the same ideals, subscribe to a similar philosophy on pivotal issues to the community. That is, it is a community. Kazaa Et. Al. have no such link to the artists who create the medium of exchange. They cannot purport to serve the best interests of these individuals, since this community exists independently of the wishes of those artists. OSS exists because of the wishes of the artists whose work OSS protects.
So, to the Open Source PSP Software Developers:
Why are you facilitating the abrogation of the rights of other artists? You would not view kindly the abrogation of your rights, are not other artists entitled to the same consideration you expect as an artist?
I'll leave the Closed Source companies out of it, they are inherently evil anyways, nor would they likely be able to understand, let alone identify with the core issues anyways. Let them be the sacrifical lambs to RIAA's maw. A more poetic fate I cannot devise. But, back to you Open Source folk, I can't believe y'all can't find a solution to this issue. Now is the time, while this issue is in the courts.
If there is a better way to show the merits of OSS than showing the same respect to the creations of others that you expect yourselves, and enforcing it in code!
Which, in the end is the most elegant solution isn't it. Those who can modify it, do so at their own risk, which given the foul mood RIAA is in... Those who can't, by far the majority, have to live with the "normal" functionality, which by the way, keeps them from violating copyrights...
....and if you have the in-house expertise to handle Linux. hey you just hit the nail on the head. Let's see which there are more of, qualified MS experts or qualified Linux experts. I bet on average you can get an MS expert a lot cheaper than a Linux expert. Invest in the infrasructure then hire the peons, not skimp on infrastructure and hire a snobby Linux zealot with a god complex.
Now you, my friend, have hit it exactly on the head.
Ever heard the old adage you get what you pay for? Comparing a qualified Linux expert to the average MCSE is like comparing a PhD in Nuclear Physics to Billy-Bob at your local Shell Station. They aren't comparable. Sure your PhD can pump his own gas, but I ain't lettin' my good ol' boy Billy Bob anywhere near my cyclotron, know what I mean?
Okay, I'll be charitable, let's replace Billy-Bob with an O-line breaking, quarterback-smooshing, running-back-defiling ogre of a Defensive Tackle who can't read a dinner menu. He's still a trained professional, but I'm still not letting him near my cyclotron.
An MCSE is (in my experience: hiring some, supervising many, firing almost _ALL_) very like someone who got through high school, but is still functionally illiterate. I've worked with MCSEs who don't know what a hosts table is FCS! Functional illiteracy comparatively.
So, if you want to spend a bunch of money on a great infrastructure and then turn it over to a bunch of functional illiterates and call that an effective computing environment, you go right ahead. My point is that if you have the snobby Linux zealot, you may not need that infrastructure, or you may, but you can be assured that you are going to get all the bang for all those bucks you spent on that infrastructure. If you turn it over to your local dime a dozen MCSE, you'll get dime a dozen performance. Even if you are going to use M$ products, you are still better off with a competent Unix professional, at least they understand what is going on behind the point and click interface, unlike your average MCSE, who is lucky to know what is going on in front of the point and click interface.
Apparently, he lives in the same parallel universe I do. I suppose you think the checkbox in Startup and Recovery labeled "Write an event to the system log" is there for looks?
So what?
I click the little checkbox, wait for my next BSOD, and voila, I've got something useful? Head shake time, unless your idea of useful is finding out that WinDoze is the problem and you have to wait for M$ to fix it.
Bottom line, I'd rather have to work a little harder to find the problem, and be able to fix it, than to have the problem spelled out in plain English and be at the mercy of the three monkeys in Redmond:
In the word's of the boys over at Ratpoison (allthough I'll spare you the worst PNG on the web...):
"In the past when working with improper window management I have found that reaching for the rodent and lifting my eyes off my FSF emacs block cursor can trigger undesired distractions, particularly when I'm working in non-Lisp dialects (well except for mercury and Pop-11) because any idle brain wave will be spent bitching to yourself silently about the lameness of the artificial language you are forced to be thinking in presently."
Say goodbye to the Rodent!
Otherwise, I do like the four-button-optical-scroll-wheel jobs for all those FPSers.
Slashdot Mirror
Bottom line, the guy is just another zealot.
How are we supposed to take seriously a journalist or analyst or whatever who admits he can't see the Open Source forest because of the zealot trees.
I particularly like how he asks us to put ourselves in his shoes and think about who we would let determine our opinion, followed almost immediately by a gushing review of what constitues a Pro, and the observation that these are the kind of people he wants working for him or that he would work for...
Umm, Mr Enderle, if you can't figure out who you should be letting determine your position, especially when you worship the pros for their objectivity, then perhaps the Linux zealot isn't the biggest part of our problem. Perhaps the biggest part of our problem is ingorant journalist/analysts who can't be bothered to do their (censored) job right in the first place!
Where'd they get this guy, Weekly World News????Same shit, different day. Sad to say, but I'm almost weepy I'm having such a deja vu moment... ...Or for the halcyon days when Apple and M$ were at each other's throats, and Linux slipped quietly through the fracas...
But, the best part of the whole article was at the bottom...
M$ Word for OS X apparently doesn't have the word competetive in the default dictionary! I wonder if "unfair trade practices" and Microsoft in the same sentence set off the grammar checker?!
Oh, I see, so every man for himself is it...
Which proves my point exactly.
If everyone felt this way, we wouldn't be having this discussion, since civilization would never have advanced to the point where /. could happen.
Contrary to your belief, if you and I prevent spam from hitting our inbox, then bully for you and me, but we haven't done a damn thing to eliminate those useless emails from being created in the first place. Nor is Spam the only manifestation of the lack of responsibility. Mal-ware in all it's forms is another manifestation. Protecting myself from these things is all well and good, but it is not the sum total of the effect. M$ had to protect their update site from Blaster, that had a spill-over effect to thousands of users, some of whom also protected themselves. Self-protection does not completely eliminate the problem.
I'm really tired of the position you appear to support, it shows no sophistication, or recognition of several thousand years of human development. Without responsibilities, rights and freedoms are the core problem. Every civilization in the world had had to learn to check the rights and freedoms of individuals from the lowliest peasant to the loftiest king, with responsibilities. Those that have failed to do so, well we don't have many around any more, they tend to consume themsleves, or are supplanted by societies with these constructs. This is a simple evolutionary progression, played out thousands of times in our collective history. Failure to recognize that the web is simply a larger manifestation of the same, and a refusal to apply the time-tested methodology for preventing such an extinction will only hasten the inevitable.
Wether you want it or not, it is likely to happen. By refusing to accept that properly handled it is a necessary safeguard, you merely open the door wider for those who want to completely control the web.
In other words, your own position on this is the thing most likely to lose you the freedom you have, and the freedom we could retain if we all grew up and accepted the fact that it will be regulated, and no amount of whining about it will change.
No, that's the functional definition of rights and freedoms in the US Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the similar documents of other democracries. (Well, if by annoying you mean abridging my rights) So, if you accept that the world is not going to be perfect, you can at least be reasonable and select the imperfections you can live with, rather than rejecting them all blindly and ending up with imperfections you can't. It's called compromise, another key to a functional society, and wait, let me guess, something else you can't abide by...
Mod me down for trolling, but if everyone is entitled to a wrong opinion, I'm entitled to tell 'em when they are!
I'd cautiously speculate that maybe they did some optimizations, ripping out unnecessary fluff and such, but IANMD...
There is an additional price though, responsiblity.
Unlimited freedom without repsonsibility is equivalent to anarchy, and the net is as close to a functional implementation of anarchy that the world has seen. However, this does not imply that what we have is an ideal. Far from it in fact.
Spam is one immediately obvious result of this freedom. Give yourself a couple minutes and you can think of several other less than desirable outcomes of all this freedom.
By tempering freedoms with responsibility, we can have the free flow of ideas we all have come to expect from the web, but without propogating all those nuisance aspect of the beast.
Unfortunately that means regulation. But regulation is not feasible in the traditional sense. The internet is a global phenomenon, and while some corners of the world act to supress portions of the traffic, by and large the web is a building block of a truly global society.
But a society must have laws to function and sustain itself. In ten short years my own usage patterns have drastically changed, as well as the usages patterns of many of my peers.
Remember the good old days? I remember not having multiple email accounts, or any of a number of other measures I routinely undertake to weed out various garbage I don't want as part of my on-line experience. We've all had to take these measures, to some degree or another.
My question is, is that the way it should be? Is spam and it's unsavoury tribe really an acceptable cost for the freedoms entailed? Most, if not all of us have extreme antipathy to spam. It's the old adage about a right is such only until it infringes on the rights of others. I feel that spam has truly infringed on my web experience, most of us should feel the same way. Even if the measures to avoid it personally are trivial, should the majority who don't want spam have to make such changes to allow safeguard the freedoms of a few individuals who refuse to honor our freedoms?
Regulation is probably inevitable, and in fact is being attempted by governments today. I think this is the bigger concern. If the web is to be regulated, such regulation needs to come from within. The danger is that the regulation will be forced from outside. The reason this will occur is because we have subjugated responsibilites to freedoms. As long as this continues to be the case there will be an increasing impetus to force such regulation on the web. The problem is that the source of such change will be the very people we don't want to make the changes happen. Big business and government.
And it makes sense, why spend money and time and effort dealing with the effects of this (relatively) unabridged freedom with virus scanners, and spam blocking services Et. Al. when the same time and monies and effort can be used to eliminate the problem. For a multinational corporation, it is a relatively trivial exercise to lobby for the legislative changes required. Once that legal environment exists, it becomes easier to implement the rest of your solution. If you can get a couple of your peers to play ball...
I leave the hardest issue for the reader, how do we encourage those who threaten our freedoms with their irresponsible behaviours to behave responsibly?
But, did you read the white paper?
/. a site while the post is up, we /. the editors all day, every day.
Sun makes a compelling point. Upping processor performance in a vacuum is not the be all, end all to improve overall system speeds. Upping processor performance in view of the limitations of the whole system makes sense.
While this is only a white paper, not an actual chip release, it does have some very promising potential, particularly for web servers and their ilk.
<sucking_up>
I'm not so sure about the editors galss dick sucking either. After all, we only
</sucking_up>
There are two builds so marked, one with XFT as well, the other built by gcc-2.95. Check the actual downloads page: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/download/
Umm. I think I'd offer some pretty good odds against BSD dying kids.
Lets count the things BSD has going for it:
Personally, I think BSD is relevant, and necessary. Even if you don't like their kernel, there is alot of code that has come out of the BSD people which we still use. Net4.0 and ssh being two quick and easy ones.
That and I find it unseemly for these two camps to waste time sniping at each other, when there are fouler fish in the pond.
But, hey, if occasional code bloat, or the occasional insertion of inferior code is the worst offense that Open Source is quilty of, (which certainly seems to be the case) then things aren't too bad, so long as it is caught and fixed.
Hard to put any credence in the SCO claims when you have folk bringing out examples of code removed for aesthetic reasons. At least we can establish that we do review our code, and regularly. Not something SCO can claim.
Ahh, but wether you leave the door locked or unlocked does not change that 'somebody' committed break and enter, or at the very least tresspassing.
Which is not to comment on the stupidity required to not use the available lock.
This, I think, is the best analogy I've seen yet. Break and enter is illegal, and the law is enforceable, yet we all have door locks. Many of us probably have home alarm systems as well. Do these facts warrant a relaxing of the law on break and enter? Were no such law in place, would the prevalence of door locks and the existence of alarm systems mitigate the need for such a law?
Likewise, with spam a multi-tiered approach is required. End users need to learn to "lock the door" and install an "alarm system." But, when the spammer figures out how to pick your lock and cirumvent your alarm, (and they will...) we still need to have some sort of recourse. Nor should the ISP's get off scott free, many are accomplices to this "crime" be it through negligence or lack of awareness.
Any solution which does not address the entire scope of the issue is likely not to be sufficient unto the task.
But, the bigger question is if spam should be a crime. Is spamming sufficiently immoral or disruptive, or what-have-you to warrant legislation. This is the important question, and the answer needs to be well thought out. Beyond the law of unintended consequences, there is the feasibility of enforcement to consider.
I really get disturbed by this one. First of all, the assertion that laws are to be dodged and abused, even the author doesn't truly believe, unless he is /.ing from prison. C'mon, if you really believed that, you would dodge and abuse the laws, and eventually you'd have got caught.
The second assertion is part of the solution for sure. But, more importantly, is the correct use of that co-operation. The community should be co-operating with the legislators to determine if a law is necessary, and in the writing and amending of such a law. Co-operation as an alternative to being involved in that needed process smacks of vigilantism, which is not going to alleviate this problem, but rather escalate it.
The big question though, is such a law enforceable? Certainly not if we view the law as something to be abused and dodged. Certainly not if we are just going to worry about our litle corner of the briar patch.
... is why the offending code was removed.
We continually are hearing about yes, it was SysV code, yes it was PD, but we removed it because there was allready _BETTER_ code in place in the kernel...
I've seen comments to this effect repeatedly now. This ought to be a revelation to a some folks (unfortunately not the ones at SCO...)
What the whole thing boils down to in a nutshell:
We didn't use your code, because your code bites.
Which leads to Sensitive's corollary:
Why would I steal SCO's code after I've used SCO's product based on that code?
Ave Linus, constructuri te salutant! (I think I blew the tense there...)...If Linux or Open Source were a single vendor.
Then CAGW has a point. But that isn't the case, limiting future software acquisitions to Open Source does not reduce the playing field to a single vendor. The important thing about this, it does not reduce any segment of your purchasing to a single vendor. Using appplications for M$ (only) may give you a broad depth of application vendors, but inly one OS vendor. Even if you look soley at Linux as the OS, you still have a plethora of vendors to obtain your OS from.
Nevermind the costs involved should you need massive revisions to your closed source product...
Umm, Reverend, yer a preachin to the choir there son...
Someone will redesign the %&*$@#$@ mouse!
I think you hit it right on the head. The 'average' CEO I've dealt with is certainly not equipped to assess this issue and react accordingly. This is a multi-disciplinary process, requiring analysis by a group of some technologically-savvy and some legally-savvy individuals, and one accountant. Personally, my input around the shop has been limited to the technology side of things. For us, the issue has consistently come down to the fact that OSS has become a major part of our infrastructure. Sure we could replace all the OSS stuff we use with commerc*al software to accomplish the same task, but the cost is prohibitive. So far, our CEO has come down on the side that our responsibility to our stockholders is best executed by not needlessly incurring costs to migrate to alternatives. Obviously the legal-eagles in our little focus group could up the pressure to make change, if the lay of the land were to change. But failing that, we see no reason to undertake the migration plan. It is important to have that migration plan though. We needed to know that we could migrate if need be. We further needed to know the cost of such migration (in time and money) to correctly assess the impact of such a move. We needed to have that safety net should the unthinkable happen and SCO prevails. Your CEO (and I know I'm teching someone's grandmother to write #include statements...) is furiously displaying the same sort of vaunted executive expertise that got Ren in bed with SCO. But ask any one of these over-tailored, under-achieving paragons of the corporate ladder the secret to attaining positions of such lofty and virtuous responsibility: Delegate down, follow up, follow up , follow up. Oh, really?
Better make that apt-get update && apt-get upgrade first.
Lindows? Never touch the stuff, Wal-Mart pees in it.
Apologies to the memory of W.C. Fields...
Funny,
/.
I contract for a medium+ marketing company. It's a really mixed bag, Linux, HP/UX, M$, The three letter acronym ending in O which I don't use in polite company any more.
My primary task is supposed to be software development. What I actually do breaks down to:
1) Slap down the intranet people, you can fill in the appropriate group in your ogranization, but in mine it the intranet developers who keep trying to foist off more Redmond Refuse in our environs.
2) Slap down the IT people, mostly for listening to the intranet group, second most likely, for not keeping decent contractors in place who actually knew WTF they were doing (sic. me.)
3) Slap down the boss, mostly for knuckling under to upper management when they make stupid requests.
4) Slap down the Help Desk, mostly for advising users to do _THE EXACT PROCEDURE I INDICATED SHOULD NOT BE DONE IN AN EMAIL 2 WEEKS AGO_.
5) Slap down the Help Desk Manager for hiring MCSE's and other functional illiterates for the Help Desk.
6) Slap down one of several phone companies, usually for trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
7) Walking around muttering about the incompetents I am forced to work with, or more accurately around.
8) (Recently) Read
9) Flatline a dev workstation, usually for the express purpose of installing some OS I want to play with, which will never see the production environment.
Of the 9, three are self-imposed, partly for my sanity, partly as a knee-jerk reaction to the other 6.
At least in my enivronment, the biggest impediment to my producticity and efficiency is the company itself!
'nuf said.
It's all well and good to legislate whatever your little heart desires. But, if the legislation is unenforceable, or a loose framework of loopholes...
As an example, when the FTC introduced the centralized DNC list, and introduced new legislation setting requirements for telemarketing. One company manufacturing servers for this activity re-coded their application to work through the loopholes in the law. Another company in the same industry worked to ensure that their equipment would operate within the law.
The point is this, without the legislation, neither company would likely have altered their products. The legislation did produce some action on the part of both companies. However, in all cases the reaction was not the intended or desired reaction.
Yes, this is a technological problem, and must be fixed that way, occasionally though legislation is the event which provides the impetus of change.
...this is probably entirely due to /..
Mental Note: Never end a sentence with /., the extra period makes it look like you're a dyslexic sending the reader up a directory.
But, my question is, if we are all so damn good at fixing letter transpositions and mispellings in-line as we read, and given English is about as complex as any language, artificial or otherwise, gets...
What the hell is wrong with cpp?
I think I can put a new spin on the whole RIAA mess:
Let:
Software developers == Song Writers
Open Source Movement == Kazaa Et. Al.
SCO == RIAA
Now write the appropriate gawk program and apply to your favorite SCO press release...
Humour aside, the situations aren't that different. SCO much like RIAA is a third party when we really look at the genesis of either set of property. However, there are still differences in this comparison. Open Source Software as a movement has little in common with Kazaa Et. Al. OSS is a body of people who are motivated by the same ideals, subscribe to a similar philosophy on pivotal issues to the community. That is, it is a community. Kazaa Et. Al. have no such link to the artists who create the medium of exchange. They cannot purport to serve the best interests of these individuals, since this community exists independently of the wishes of those artists. OSS exists because of the wishes of the artists whose work OSS protects.So, to the Open Source PSP Software Developers: Why are you facilitating the abrogation of the rights of other artists? You would not view kindly the abrogation of your rights, are not other artists entitled to the same consideration you expect as an artist?
I'll leave the Closed Source companies out of it, they are inherently evil anyways, nor would they likely be able to understand, let alone identify with the core issues anyways. Let them be the sacrifical lambs to RIAA's maw. A more poetic fate I cannot devise. But, back to you Open Source folk, I can't believe y'all can't find a solution to this issue. Now is the time, while this issue is in the courts.
If there is a better way to show the merits of OSS than showing the same respect to the creations of others that you expect yourselves, and enforcing it in code!
Which, in the end is the most elegant solution isn't it. Those who can modify it, do so at their own risk, which given the foul mood RIAA is in... Those who can't, by far the majority, have to live with the "normal" functionality, which by the way, keeps them from violating copyrights...
Now you, my friend, have hit it exactly on the head.
Ever heard the old adage you get what you pay for? Comparing a qualified Linux expert to the average MCSE is like comparing a PhD in Nuclear Physics to Billy-Bob at your local Shell Station. They aren't comparable. Sure your PhD can pump his own gas, but I ain't lettin' my good ol' boy Billy Bob anywhere near my cyclotron, know what I mean?
Okay, I'll be charitable, let's replace Billy-Bob with an O-line breaking, quarterback-smooshing, running-back-defiling ogre of a Defensive Tackle who can't read a dinner menu. He's still a trained professional, but I'm still not letting him near my cyclotron.An MCSE is (in my experience: hiring some, supervising many, firing almost _ALL_) very like someone who got through high school, but is still functionally illiterate. I've worked with MCSEs who don't know what a hosts table is FCS! Functional illiteracy comparatively.
So, if you want to spend a bunch of money on a great infrastructure and then turn it over to a bunch of functional illiterates and call that an effective computing environment, you go right ahead. My point is that if you have the snobby Linux zealot, you may not need that infrastructure, or you may, but you can be assured that you are going to get all the bang for all those bucks you spent on that infrastructure. If you turn it over to your local dime a dozen MCSE, you'll get dime a dozen performance. Even if you are going to use M$ products, you are still better off with a competent Unix professional, at least they understand what is going on behind the point and click interface, unlike your average MCSE, who is lucky to know what is going on in front of the point and click interface.
Mod me down, here comes the troll!
MCSE - A shorter acronym for PEBCAK..who wrote: "The Earth is too fragile a basket for humanity to store all it's eggs in."
So what? I click the little checkbox, wait for my next BSOD, and voila, I've got something useful? Head shake time, unless your idea of useful is finding out that WinDoze is the problem and you have to wait for M$ to fix it. Bottom line, I'd rather have to work a little harder to find the problem, and be able to fix it, than to have the problem spelled out in plain English and be at the mercy of the three monkeys in Redmond:
See no source
Hear no source
Speak no source.
Yeah, and the Windows stats would have been even lower if SCO ran real OS's on their Web Servers...
In the word's of the boys over at Ratpoison (allthough I'll spare you the worst PNG on the web...):
"In the past when working with improper window management I have found that reaching for the rodent and lifting my eyes off my FSF emacs block cursor can trigger undesired distractions, particularly when I'm working in non-Lisp dialects (well except for mercury and Pop-11) because any idle brain wave will be spent bitching to yourself silently about the lameness of the artificial language you are forced to be thinking in presently."
Say goodbye to the Rodent!
Otherwise, I do like the four-button-optical-scroll-wheel jobs for all those FPSers.