Like many corporations offer you "free samples" or "free services", I do believe many record/movie corporations could offer either plenty of low-quality files or limited-quantity high-quality files to fans, while keeping the rights and ownership to the original CD.
For instance: The Throbbing Appendages releases two singles "Not with you" and "Fsck my hard disk" as high-quality MP3 files on the Internet, and also sells a normal-length CD with 12 other songs on their web site. Or it could even release the entire CD as MP3, but also sell their "Live In Osaka" album, with tons of new songs and rare versions of the previous ones. Once the "Live In Osaka" CD is released, they may even offer for free what they used to sell.
We have there a "win-win" situation: if The Throbbins Appendages do a good job, they'll get tons of downloads from their site, as well as fan contributions, while still selling lots of CDs from their web site. The fans get free MP3 files, are able to enjoy the nice music, and will certainly buy the CD once they get a credit card with their names on it.
And if the band use Win2K for their web servers, their fans will get so frustrated by the slow download that they'll buy the CD anyway... =)
In part, this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation.
Ramen noodles? MICROSOFT Ramen Noodles? What blasphemy! The original Open Source Food for Uber-Geeks should never be tainted by association with the Evil One(tm)! Arm yourselves, geeks! Boycott Microsoft Ramen Noodles!!!
This was a public-service announcement from the SmashDot Team (tm).
As a professional translator and localization specialist, I think I have a fair idea of the challenges involved in producing good technical documents.
My questions are the following: do you think most Open Source Technical Writers or Open Source Programmers produce documents that are easy to translate or do you think this side of documentation could use some improvement?
What are the general rules you apply when considering a new documentation? Possible number of users? Importance of the project? For instance: GNOME may have more users but a program such as SendMail may well be even more important in terms of use.
I suppose you consider translation important to Open Source projects... but do you have a lot of translators that volunteer for that thankless task? And what would you advise me to do in order to have enough time to have a regular job and do my part to bring Open Source to as many people as possible?
I was wondering about putting together a simple set of scripts file for the protection of corporation-censored programs, such as Decss and Cphack.
The script, on a given date, would format a Usenet post that would contain the uuencoded and zipped source code to the "censored" programs and post it on Usenet through an anonymous remailer.
Every 2 weeks (for instance), all Usenet users would therefore receive the censored programs. And the nice thing is, they cannot censor this, unless they can manage to shut down EVERY Usenet server, EVERY anonymous remailer and EVERY newsgroup in existence! Automatic routing around censorship.
This program would only post to relevant newsgroups and therefore avoid Spam. Another twist that could be added would be to select ONE newsgroup in a list and post only to this one. Hmmmm... alt.usenet.censored.software, anyone? =)
2000-03-20 15:35 GMT Dr Evil Submarine Base Somewhere in the Marriana Trench.
Dr Evil: "... We will subvert the Open Source movement, fork Linux, go IPO with Dr EviLinux(tm) and make millions of dollars!! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!"
[Stunned and embarassed silence around the table]
Number Two: "[Clearing throat] Er... Dr Evil, sir... You cannot really fork Linux... It's controlled by that finnish guy Linus Torvalds... And the largest Linux companies in the world are actually more sought-after on Wall Street than (gasp!) our own Evil Corporation(tm)!"
Scott Evil: "Yeah, you idiot! And any moron knows that Linux is protected by the GPL anyway! If you do something good with Linux, you have to release the code, and all your competitors can then incorporate it in their own distros! You are just an imbecile!"
Mini Me: [Jumps on table and slaps Scott]
Scott Evil: "OUCH! [incensed]I am going to kill you, you little piece of sh..."
Dr Evil: "Zip it Scott! Mini-Me, I said no slapping while Daddy is working! Number Two! What is that [quote with fingers]Evil Corporation(tm)[quote with fingers]?"
Number Two: "Well, you know, the software company that has some problems with the DoJ roght now? [whispering] The one that is based in Seattle? 65K+ bugs in their last released product?"
Dr Evil: "Riiiiiiiiiight... That Evil Corporation(tm)"
[Thinks for a little while]
Dr Evil: "Very well, then, I'll just have to come up with another plan to conquer the world and make plenty of money. Something which involves large nuclear weapons or some such. This time-traveling is so embarassing -- you just cannot keep up to date with all these latest technologies. Come Mini-Me! Daddy is going to teach you how to torture small animals while he thinks about all this"
Flame Wars: how to get the most out of your web site?
After testing extensively the different brands of flamewars available on the market, our SmashDot(tm) test center has decided to extensively analyze the performance of the following flame wars on geeks, nerds and system administrators. The results are as follow:
Which Linux Distro? Flame rating: 82%. An instant classic, the "Which linux distro should I choose?" flamewar quickly degenerates into name-calling Nathalie Portman p0rn and hot grits. "First Post!" content is also well represented. An amusing twist on this flame war formula is to try the "Linux vs BSD" or flame war, which guarantees very bright and entertaining flames (usually due to the presence of daemons-advocates in the Slashdot community).
W2K vs Linux? Flame rating: 90% A strong contender to the flame war crown, W2K vs Linux usually has very very high user response, especially from "Anonymous Cowards" posting from microsoft.com domain (9:00am to 05:30pm PST only). Wild numbers such as "99.9% reliability" and "60,000+ bugs" provide much combustible material to this flame war.
Ban Jon Katz from Slashdot forever! Flame rating: 99.9999% How much is Jon Katz loved? Just make sure to post and let us know! Ground temperature in the geek compound has been known to reach several millions of degrees, effectively drowning out all pretense of rational discourse.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Honorable mentions include newbie questions, news for nerds that were posted before, the classic "Emacs vs vi" flame burst (unfortunately losing steam these days) and the "This does not belong on Slashdot!" flame war, which may well be a strong contender as long as
Since we certainly want the best, hottest and brightest flame wars for our own site, we'll stick with the tried-and-proven favourite: the Jon Katz flame war.
Jon Katz -- a good roasting guaranteed every time! Get yours today!
Another public-service testing from the SmashDot(tm) team!
I can't pretend I know every implication, but I have a lot of friends in third-world countries, so I may have a little bit of information to mention.
Actually, "starting" an ISP in such a country is not that hard technologically speaking. Please remember that's what Open source is for: any third-world country can benefit from Linux/BSD (as well as SendMail/Apache/etc...) projects. These are, after all, proven OS, with a good track record, lots of sources of information and so on and so forth.
Also remember that PC is pretty much commodity hardware these days, which means it's fairly unexpensive, as long as the country you are working in has low import duties on these machines. In the worst possible case, I have known people (in Africa, for instance) who will smuggle (smaller) portable computers or even whole disassembled computers bought cheaply elsewhere in the world.
Thanks to the optimization done by open-source volunteers all over the globe, even low-end machines can handle pretty heavy workloads -- even ultra-cheap "obsolete" machines such as 486 and low-end Pentiums.
The real problems therefore are:
Infrastructure. Electric brown-outs or complete outages, power spikes, and so on and so forth are a daily occurence in most countries. Most of these can be solved with good UPS, but the same problems apply as to the computers mentioned above. Unreliable suppliers and
Bandwidth. Most telecom companies in third-world countries are already severely overloaded by voice communications. To ask them to handle heavy Internet IP traffic is, most of the time, an exercice in frustration. This is why even some of the best-equipped third-world countries only accept 9600bps connections to the outside. Remember that telecom is usually entirely in the hands of government (or government cronies). Fatter piper means spending $$$$ in huge amounts, as most of these use fiber-optics, and are not used to connect western countries to Third-world ones.
Government intervention. Which can take several forms: (a) outright censorship, the government just cut up your net connection if it does not like what you are doing with it, (b) surveillance, as in men in grey suits politely asking you to open all the mail or www traffic that goes through your servers. This is a very serious problem, especially if your governement does not like to be criticized...
Also, please remember that in most of these countries, as sad as it is to say, you have very little (or none at all) legal recourse if you don't like what the government is doing. Democracy, even in the best of cases, is still, unfortunately, a very remote concept to the day-to-day life of most people in the Third World.
Finally, there is the little question of profit -- few individuals or corporations are wealthy enough to be able to afford a PC, let alone a 'net connection.
Consider the longstanding battles over encryption software export. Does anyone honestly believe forreign governments couldn't manage to get their hands on the 128-bit version of Netscape? Come on! Yet, the government still interfered here. It's important to remember this.
With all due respect, I fail to see why
First of all, please use the term "US Government". The US Government is the one that is at stake here. Other governments may or may not have the same kind of prohibition when it comes to supercomputers and "sensitive" countriesand/or uses.
Second, as I pointed out (and as you said yourself) regulations won't help the US Government stop the export of Beowulf clusters, precisely because the technology required for Beowulf clusters is available everywhere.
What matters is that, by putting regulation into place, the US government can now prosecute anyone who willingly exports that technology to "Freedonia" or any other terrorist country.
Since most of the people who run these countries are far from stupid, they'll simply execute some variation of what I outlined above: buy the technology as discreetly as possible, probably not in the US, through decoy companies and then ship it back to where they need it. US regulations will be avoided -- but these US regulations will be available in the case anyone is stupid enough to think they can directly sell Beowulf clusters to Freedonia or whatever.
As many people have pointed out Beowulf clusters cannot be restricted, precisely because they are clusters and not one machine.
Let's go through this real quick:
Sales of individual PC are usually not restricted. A rogue nation (say, the dangerous black-listed terrorist country of "Freedonia") could put together a dozen decoy companies, who then proceed to buy either complete PC or enough spare parts (motherboards, CPU, RAM, HDD, netword cards, etc...) to put together a nice 100+ nodes cluster. To avoid suspicion, just pretend company XYZ is getting started and needs to put together its LAN with 10 computers. Multiply by 12 or 15 different companies and voilà: your Beowulf is ready for delivery! You can even get brand-name machines, and you supplier will probably throw in a laser printer for free!
High-speed routers/hubs can be had in the same way as above. Just mention the LAN has to be powerful because you want to exchange huge graphical files...
Linux/FreeBSD distributions can be had over the Internet for free. Or, you can just walk into any computer shop in the western world with $20 in cash and come out with what you need. No hassle, no paperwork, no problem.
Most Beowulf related information is available for free on the Internet. Just make sure you use a 'net connection that can be traced back to an unrestricted western country (say, the UK) and download all you want. After a little while, either burn a couple of CD-ROMs with all he information you need or just do a hard copy and ship everything back to Freedonia.
Put some of your best and brightest brains on it, and your Beowulf cluster should be humming in no time, happliy crunching the numbers of your H-Bomb secret project.
Hardware failure? Need more CPU power? Just repeat the steps above!
That's all there is to it, as far as I know. I should add that many "Freedonias", during the cold war, used the exact same procedures to illegally acquire hardware they were not allowed to buy... There are even tales of the (old) USSR acquiring Cray machines, when these were the "crown jewels" of US computing. Commodity hardware has just made this 100 times more simple...
Emacs has everything one desires, including the kitchen sink. Who needs a word processor, when you can have the GOD of text editors. Remember: UNIX is a process that runs under Emacs.
Of course, this entire comment is a complete joke. Sorry, I just could not resist...
Aaaaaah, the smell of flame wars in the wee hours of the morning. =)
No, I don't think Micros~1 orchestrated this. They are certainly delighted by this article, though (and maybe even wrote part of it -- THAT would not be surprising).
Solaris and Linux are insecure? Yes, but large DoS attacks could be done just as easily (more easily, in fact: see the BO2K post above) from insecure WinNT and Win95 machines connected to the Internet. Hey, as far as I know, Back Orifice 2000 was released first under WinNT, right? One should also remember that Yahoo was one of the first site targeted... and everyone knows that Yahoo runs FreeBSD (No flame, please!).
Even if Solaris and Linux are to blame for the recent DoS epidemic, they can be secured much faster and much more completely than said WinNT servers. Remember, it only took a few hours to get a patch for the Linux "Ping of Death" IP stack attack. Now that the nasty crackers have got sysadmin running for cover, expect a soon-to-be-released-patch to correct this DoS issue.
Finally, something that should be pointed out: DoS are a pain in the neck, but they do not compromise the security of credit card numbers (for instance). They just prevent the services offered by the target from being accessible. Yahoo was back online in a few hours and I fully expect all web servers running Open Source (whether *BSD or Linux) to survive this with minor inconvenineces at worst. Solaris and Windows NT are another matter entirely of course.
So the verdict is: this article is clueless FUD (surprise! surprise!). WinNT is insecure. Linux and Solaris are more secure. OpenBSD is secure by default. So there. Of course, this opinion is only worth what you paid to read it.
I remember reading "Slan" when I was 14 or 15. Man, that was great science-fiction.
But, much more than that, it meant to much to me because it described my life. In the books, Slans are rejected, feared and hated for being different. Mr Van Vogt had hit on a very universal theme.
I also remember that, at the same time I was reading the book, me and some of my high-school friends were being rejected (and feared and ridiculed, etc...) for being the first kids on the block with a passion for micro-computers. That book was such a mirror image of my life. I kept re-reading it, when I was not busy hacking on the CP/M machines my high-school had. Even though I do not necessarily like the conclusion, the "politics" or the black/white plot logic of the book, I guess I'll always a soft spot for the hunted Slans -- strangers, geeks and nerds before these terms became mainstream.
I usually do not respond to Slashdot's "Anonymous Cowards" (the name says it all, IMHO). Nevertheless, here are a couple of quick (and, I hope, amusing) thoughts for you...
I suppose you think up new ways to dis Microsoft in your sleep.
Wrong. Why?
Because, like a lot of geeks, I get very little sleep. And I try to optimize the time I spend in my bed... Therefore, I do not dream of Microsoft or Bill Gates while I sleep. It makes me fart during the night. =)
I don't have to search for reasons to "dis" Microsoft. Its Marketing Department supply all the fodder I (and others) need. Their modus operandi seem to be: "Open Mouth. Insert Foot. Close Mouth". The article that started this whole discussion in the first place is a very good case in point.
Besides, if you want MS-positive articles, you are probably better off looking at Microsoft own website, not Slashdot!
Jesus God, get OUT more.
My name is neither Jesus, nor God. And I get "out" every once in a while, thank you. As a matter of fact, I am going to a show tonight.
Get a relationship.
Not with you, no. But thanks for the offer.
Go to the beach.
I'd love to. But I (unfortunately) do not live in a city with a beach nearby. Besides, in a lot of parts of the world, a beach in January is actually quite a cold and forbidding place. I have a suggestion: maybe you should get out of... let me guess... Sunny California? and see more of the world!
Stop playing Quake and Starcraft.
I stopped playing Quake long ago. I never played Starcraft. So there.
Stop looking for aliens with your spare CPU cycles and start helping actual humans on the streets of your hometown.
The great thing about computers is that I can do both. My computer is looking for aliens while I go out and (among other things) donate my blood and distribute food to homeless people.
What have you done lately?
Not that I _support_ Microsoft, but holding this degree of anger against them CAN'T be healthy.
I am "angry" because:
The CNN article was laughable, a ridiculous piece that will probably make any security-conscious network admin snicker. And go back to whatever Open-Source
Despite the fact that MS has been (security) laughingstock for years now, they are still spinning the same old, tired arguments, that they really care about security, etc... While everyone who has been into computers
In short, MS is lying through its teeth. And such a lack of honesty makes me mad -- and it should make you mad, too, that a huge, multibillion dollar corporation, denounced recntly by the US DOJ as a "monopoly" has the gall to lie in such a way to its customers.
This being said, I really want you to feel OK -- I am not going to lose any sleep about MS or Bill Gates, really, as I have said above.
On the other hand, by attacking me personnaly, you simply prove this: MS drones do not know how to argue. You could have countered every argument I have presented above with reasoned facts and counter-claims. You did not, which is not surprising. After all, that's what Slashdot ACs are for, right?
This marketroid piece was so full of holes it's not even funny anymore...
Microsoft has made a comprehensive effort to build Windows 2000 with security in mind, including having a staff of 15 people study the code for breaches, denials of service, and bugs.
15 people to review... What was it? 30 MILLION lines of code? And what was the qualification of these people? Script Kiddies??
A preliminary version of the product also was put on the Internet to enable users to look for security breaches, Valentine said. Within two weeks, four denials of service bugs were found, but no breaches were discovered, he said.
As Dr Evil would say: "Riiiiiiight"... Within two weeks, the NT2K server crashed so many times they decided to put it off-line. I'll let you, gentle reader, decide for yourself what that means...
Source code also was delivered to 70 agencies and universities around the world for their perusal.
*Yawn* Which Universities? Which Agencies? (Mindcraft???!!!) Names, references, Web site? Results of aforementioned "perusal"? Are these results published anywhere? (Probably not...) Were the "agencies" able to modify the source code?
As someone else said: "Microsoft is not an answer. Microsoft is a question. The answer is: No".
Read my lips Microsoft: Open-Source is going to bury you alive. Commodification of hardware, commodification of OS is the end of Bill's Evil Empire. The penguin and the demon will dance on your graves... (insert Dr Evil most sinister laughter here)
I have heard many times that L0pht uses OpenBSD almost exclusively for their servers. Is that true? If so, could you please explain why (in a more detailed manner that just the obvious "it's been audited for security...") and also tell us if you contribute code back to OpenBSD.
First of all, thank you for a very interesting piece. I am one of your fans, and it was really cool to see you ^post on Slashdot!
Naming Georges Marshall as "Man of the Century" certainly is a good choice, and most of the points you raise excellent. Here are a few remarks of my own:
"A time when colonialism would give way to equality among peoples"
Well, that certainly isn't true. Most nations at the start of the Twentieth Century thought about expanding their existing empires and bring more people and territories under their domination. Even the USA were involved in colonialism at the time, with its "management" of the Philippines and other territories it won in the US-Spanish war. Most European nations (France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain, etc) had huge empires that spanned the globe -- and most of them considered as a "God-given" right the possibility to dominate other people and cultures. Remember: those were deeply racist times and the white people of the earth truly believed they were the ones to bring light, science, education and Christianity to the poor masses of the rest of the world. Democracy was for WASP, or, at the very least for Rich White Men (no women or "colored" accepted, thank you).
"Superstition would step aside for of free enquiry"
Again, this can be disputed: in most of Europe, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century were periods that saw an incredible surge in spiritism, the "New Age Religion" of that time. Many people then (as now) believed in spiritual planes, in angels and so on and so forth. It is true that science was elevated above everything else -- but most people at the time, even in the richest European countries, still lived in poverty and/or in an agrarian lifestyle, lived and die in the place they were born and totally ignored the world beyond the next village.
Like careening drunks, we commenced a long and horrible infatuation with ideologies -- from communism and fascism to nationalist jingoism and every other "ism" imaginable.
One may argue that this fascination with ideology came from the same simplistic vision of the future that was commonly accepted at the time: that science was going to solve every problem and allow us to live an abundant life. Communism and Socialism also came about because of the appaling conditions of the "working class" at the time. While that may not excuse the ignoble murders that followed, Marx (a 19th century prophet of doom) had many things to say, and many that ring true today. In particular, some of his visions about the limit of Capitalism still ring true today.
I would say, in general, that the start of the 20th century was an incredibly naive times -- most people truly reduced human beings to paper caricature and refused to see the complexity of both the world and the creatures that inhabit it.
Today, at the end of this tense century, we might look back on it as a pit that Homo sapiens fell into, then somehow managed to climb out of again, chastened and perhaps even a bit wiser.
IMHO, we never climbed out of the pit. We are just sinking down a little bit more slowly...
Despite a myriad problems, ours is a better, more hopeful world than it was in 1942, when humanity wallowed in violence, justified by frantic polemics.
... NOT! Pollution, South/North Economic problems, growing corporatism and its definition of intellectual property, the paralysis of most international institutions and of democracy, Eugenics, the runaway nuclear problem, regional tensions, religious fanaticism, the control and standardization of mass-media, as well as the return of the intra-state competition, etc... All these problems make our world a much more dangerous and volatile world than in 1942.
Let's face it: we are not getting any closer to world peace and cooperation. The one difference between now and 1942 is that the most powerful countries in the world are not fighting each other, as they were then.
Marshall's most difficult work commenced after victory was achieved. (...) Of course he was the guiding force behind the "Marshall Plan" (...) That one act of resolve -- achieved over fierce political opposition -- reversed the bellicose tradition of 4,000 years by treating vanquished foes with generosity instead of vindictiveness.
On that, I totally agree with you. Marshall did not repeat the terrible, repugnant folly of the Treaty of Versailles and probably paved the way for both peace and prosperity... in Western Europe only.
Amid the tempests of an angry era, Marshall (again, in cooperation with others) helped ensure that the United Nations was built into something more capable than the old League of Nations (...)
... And many would argue today that he failed. The UN today is nothing more than an a source of interesting world statistics and a soapbox where poor people of the world can plead for help -- often with no result. It is also interesting to note that the USA, who helped create the UN in the first place, are right now one of its most constant enemies (for instance, because they do not pay their due to the UN). Sadly, the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, as become increasingly irrelevent as large corporations plunder and extort enormous concessions from the smallest and poorest nations of the world.
Money and brute force are the two most effective forces in the world today. This situation has been the same for most of mankind's history, and I am afraid it will stay this way for all of our history.
Nevertheless, we should find it profoundly historic that there is now a widely accepted world moral code, one that even the worst dictators pay lip service to.
The key words here are "lip service". There is no "international" moral code. Morality is not recognized as an important factor in International Law. Morality does not exist as far as nations are concerned. Period.
Example? Tibet/China. Tibet has been oppressed by China for 20? 30 years? What have done to change this? Nothing! Why? Because China's power and headcount make most nation weary of confronting them... and most companies just salivate at the prospect of a prosperous China. Does it really matter China is not a democracy? Of course not -- don't be silly. Money talks.
The strategy of containment that he and Acheson devised -- aiming to neither provoke the Communist Empire, nor allow it to run wild -- was the middle road that guided every U.S.administration for 50 years, notwithstanding episodes of naivete and saber-rattling. (...) you have only to ask the people of Prague, Warsaw, and a hundred other places how they feel about the outcome.
As Dr Evil would say: "Right...". Well, just remember who it was that divided Europe (and most of the world) between them and Uncle "Joe" Stalin. FDR and Churchill. It was quite convenient to turn a blind eye when the tanks rolled in Prague, Warsaw or Budapest. Most of NATO and the USA hardly ever blinked at the time.
People in Eastern Europe may feel great (maybe just OK, actually) right now -- but people in Russia are not! And the quality of life of most people in Eastern Europe is still way below the rest of Western Europe. Not to mention Bulgaria or Romania, where living standards have been (incredibly) tumbling down from their already low position.
Above all, we did not panic and fry this planet. Wasn't that enough?
Well, "we" did not fry the planet because "they" also had the bomb. And, even then, "we" came awfully close to frying the planet a couple of times, thank you.
Dear Mr Brin, I am afraid that (like many other science-fiction writer) you succumb to the same idealistic vision you so forcefully (and rightfully) denounce at the start of your essay. We are not entering a Golden Age. There is no Golden Age -- just a long, slow crawl from one era of bloodshed to another. Humanity may have learned a lesson or two during the 20th Century, but probably not enough to pass it on to the next generation (or the generation after that). Proof? Neo-Nazi movements are on the rise again, thanks (in part) to the Internet.
Expect more massacres and ideologies in the near future, despite all the good work of Mr Marshall... One sad "feature" (read: bug) of humanity is that lessons are usually not learned very well, and forgotten as soon as another generation appears on the stage to replace the previous one.
How to win your GPL-based lawsuit against big corporations, in 5 easy steps:
Publish all relevant details on your web site, including both the GPL-covered version of the software and either a copy or a link to the non-GPL-covered version. Include, if at all possible, a useful comparison of functionalities, diff of sources, etc. In short, try to obtain as much information as possible about the alleged violation. Make sure you triple-check everything before going any further.
Send a polite e-mail to company/individual, requesting that they "cease and desist", respect the terms of the GPL, publish full source code and/or modifications from your version, and acknowledge you as rightful "owner" and maintainer of the software. Since most companies will try to ignore you, prepare several polite copies of the same e-mail, and send to relevant authorities in the company (CEO, legal department, marketing department, etc...). Make sure to publish both e-mails and responses on your web site. I believe most companies will settle at this stage, especially if you explain very clearly what you intend to do if they do not comply (see below).
Try to get the news published on Slashdot and other public-discussion forum -- this will raise awareness of your case very, very, very fast. Include links to both GPL-protected version and non-GPL version. Make sure people can look at the evidence you have gathered on your web site. Put mirrors up if your site is slashdotted. =)
If no answer (or the wrong kind of answer) is received from the company: post entire stories on your web site, including links, etc. Contact both FSF, Slashdot, and most users of your software and (politely) ask them their help in setting up a legal defense fund. If your software is included in large Linux/Open Source distributions (for instance: Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, SuSE), ask these companies to contribute as a gesture of goodwill. Make sure you send the entire story to on-line and off-line media (for instance the NY Times and Salon).
You have won: the GPL-violating company now face (a) the wrath of Internet zealots (Mmmmm... the taste of the Ping Of Death in the morning...), (b) a legal suit that could prove very costly and financially damaging and (c) a public-relations nightmare. No sane company is going to expose its backside to the kind of hellfire you have just created. Just make sure you have got everything right before unleashing this kind of thing on an innocent company, though...
Of course, I am not a lawyer -- but you don't need to be one to see this kind of thing unfolding.
Just imagine this: "Mr Gates, how do you explain your enormous company violated the rights of Mr John Q. LoneHacker, the creator of BlaBlaBla, by stealing his intellectual property, which was protected under the GPL?". =)
Just my $0.02...
Jon Katz, Luddite Leader?
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
A few points, if I may.
This has been pointed out before, Jon, but "Gattaca" is a movie. Please do not base your vision of the future on movies only. This does not really allow for a balanced and informed view of the future.
Religion may have been responsible for a lot of bloodshed and suffering, that we agree on, but the three worst butchers of the Twentieth Century are Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot (not necessarily in that order). Two out of these three were Communists, who did not believe in God ("Religion is the opium of the people...", yadda yadda yadda). The third one (Hitler) was either an atheist or a pagan (your pick). Let's face it: most monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Buddhism, etc...) are the source for ethical conduct and values... The same ethical conduct and values that you are using to criticize genetic manipulation. That just does not cut it. You can't criticize religions in their entirety and refuse to acknowledge the ethical and intellectual framework they give mankind to deal with questions such as this one.
"Human Cloning" may be a few years away, but, as far as I can remember, there are significant issues about premature aging and cell death. Don't forget, as well, that a human brain is significantly more advanced than a sheep's brain. Cell degeneration may produce some very nasty side effects in the "results" of human cloning.
Sampling the gene pool of Iceland requires (a) the approval of the population there, which may not be forthcoming, since most of these guys should be pretty well informed by now and (b)
Let's face it: as disgusting as it may seem, "eugenics" (the "improvement" of the human race through selective breeding and abortion) exists even today: in some parts of China, killing female fetuses is a common practice and has become a serious problem, raising the ratio of males to females to 130 on 100. Ancient cultures used to throw away unwanted or deformed babies. Etc... etc... Learn a little bit of history and try to open your eyes to the world around you, will you Jon, before jumping up and down on your little soapbox.
Overall, you have some valid questions. Questions that should be discussed and approched very seriously. I just feel you should take the time to write something serious instead of this fluff.
My most serious concern, as of now, is that corporations will take over the Genetic Code of humanity. The moral, economical and intellectual implications are simply staggering. Read "intellectual property, gene patent and corporate destruction of democracy" there and you have it in a nutshell.
That's all for now. This opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it... =)
OK, here is my take on your question. Watch out, though, as I am not a Beowulf expert.
Here are some information you may consider before starting your own cluster:
Beowulf clusters have to be useful for the kind of scientific projects your university undertakes. Large science (physics, astronomy) projects, usually coded in Fortran and involving lots of calculations that can be computed in parallel, are ideal applications for them. Other applications may be a lot less interesting. A Beowulf cluster, depsite its power, is not always the perfect solution.
If your University is short on cash, you may want to investigate the "Stone Soup" cluster -- recycled old Pentiums and 486s can find a second lease on life in a Beowulf cluster. Pros: cheap. Cons: require a lot of labor and patience and is less powerful than Beowulf cluster using up-to-date CPUs and network connections.
To be truly effective, Beowulf clusters require at least a couple of very powerful servers and very advanced network hardware -- be sure to compute this into the total cost.
Beowulf clusters are not for the faint of heart. They require quite a lot of skills, as far as the network configuration, machine configuration and traffic optimization are concerned. It's not surprising the first Beowulf were born at NASA -- It did require rocket scientists to make them work! =) Once they are up and running, though, their performances are close or better than dedicated supercomputers -- for a small fraction of the price.
Another good side of Beowulf is the fail-safe possibilities and evolution capacities of such a machine. If a "node" goes down, the machine does not crash, and the node share of the task(s) can be assigned by the main server to another machine. If you need a more powerful machine, simply add a dozen new PCs to your mix and watch those MIPS/Gigaflops go up!
Finally, never forget the one argument that wins them all: price, price, price, price! Linux is free, Intel PCs are dirt cheap, all you need is a lot of space and a dedicated team to make it work. Oh, and lots of network cards & cables... =)
So, some positive factors, some negative ones. If you want to convince your University, always remind them that they can always count on the support of other universities and research centres the world over that are using this technology right now.
Is it me, or does that thing sound like (ahem) Prince?
You know, the old saw: "The Operating System formerly known as Windows CE..." =) Sorry: "The Operating System formerly known as WinCE..."
And what does that "CE" stands for? "Crash Extremely fast"? "Carry Excess bagagge?" "Could not Exchange data with desktop?"
And what about the new name -- "Powered by Windows"? Why not "Crashed by Windows"? That's more like it...
Don't you just love heaping scorn on the largest software company in the world? What are we going to do once it has faded back into a richly deserved irrelevence?
First of all, thanks a lot (to you and to the rest of the Debian team) for an oustanding job!
Several quick questions:
(A) What is exactly the BSD/Debian project? What are its goals? Is it officially supported by the Debian project, or is it just some sort of personal projects for some Debian programmers?
(B) When can we expect a release of the GNU/HURD? Do you think the HURD is the next great thing and that we'll all have to leave Linux/*BSD to install it on our machines?
(C) On a more personal note... how do you manage all this work? Jolt, Coca-Cola, designer drugs or just good old plain caffeine? Do you receive extra credit for working on Debian during your studies? =)
Isn't it striking that the two (democratic) countries that seem the closest to implementing far-and-wide, liberty-squashing legislation are two of the most important members of the Commonwealth?
I do hope this trend is not going to spread any further -- I'd hate to see Canada, the European Union and the United States implement such brain-dead laws...
Now, the question is: what can we do to fight this trend? Re-create PPP/PPTP/encrypted links to/from Australia to bypass the censorship? Protest and scream with our Australian friends until we are blue in the face?
What on earth do we have to do to be left alone by clueless politicians?
One thing that Richard Stallman did not take into account is that the UK is part of the European Union. As such, it is bound to respect the European Convention on Human Rights, which is mandatory to join the EU.
In case this law was passed (which remains to be seen -- we may even have a rare Labour/Tory bipartisan front against this law) and a British citizen lands in prison because of it, I guess there would two major consequences: (a) an outcry all over Europe against the UK and (b) an appeal by said British citizen to the EU Human rights court, whose decision would be binding on both British judicial institutions and (in general) other European courts.
Not to mention Amnesty International, which would probably throw up a ruckus over it. Interesting times to be a Britsih citizen, for sure. First BSE, then this. Hmmmm... Are these related?
Slashdot Mirror
It's been done. Check this link.
Like many corporations offer you "free samples" or "free services", I do believe many record/movie corporations could offer either plenty of low-quality files or limited-quantity high-quality files to fans, while keeping the rights and ownership to the original CD.
For instance: The Throbbing Appendages releases two singles "Not with you" and "Fsck my hard disk" as high-quality MP3 files on the Internet, and also sells a normal-length CD with 12 other songs on their web site. Or it could even release the entire CD as MP3, but also sell their "Live In Osaka" album, with tons of new songs and rare versions of the previous ones. Once the "Live In Osaka" CD is released, they may even offer for free what they used to sell.
We have there a "win-win" situation: if The Throbbins Appendages do a good job, they'll get tons of downloads from their site, as well as fan contributions, while still selling lots of CDs from their web site. The fans get free MP3 files, are able to enjoy the nice music, and will certainly buy the CD once they get a credit card with their names on it.
And if the band use Win2K for their web servers, their fans will get so frustrated by the slow download that they'll buy the CD anyway... =)
Of course, that's only my US$ 0.02...
From the Reason Magazine article:
In part, this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation.
Ramen noodles? MICROSOFT Ramen Noodles? What blasphemy! The original Open Source Food for Uber-Geeks should never be tainted by association with the Evil One(tm)! Arm yourselves, geeks! Boycott Microsoft Ramen Noodles!!!
This was a public-service announcement from the SmashDot Team (tm).
Sorry -- Could not resist... =)
As a professional translator and localization specialist, I think I have a fair idea of the challenges involved in producing good technical documents.
My questions are the following: do you think most Open Source Technical Writers or Open Source Programmers produce documents that are easy to translate or do you think this side of documentation could use some improvement?
What are the general rules you apply when considering a new documentation? Possible number of users? Importance of the project? For instance: GNOME may have more users but a program such as SendMail may well be even more important in terms of use.
I suppose you consider translation important to Open Source projects... but do you have a lot of translators that volunteer for that thankless task? And what would you advise me to do in order to have enough time to have a regular job and do my part to bring Open Source to as many people as possible?
Thanks in advance!
I was wondering about putting together a simple set of scripts file for the protection of corporation-censored programs, such as Decss and Cphack.
The script, on a given date, would format a Usenet post that would contain the uuencoded and zipped source code to the "censored" programs and post it on Usenet through an anonymous remailer.
Every 2 weeks (for instance), all Usenet users would therefore receive the censored programs. And the nice thing is, they cannot censor this, unless they can manage to shut down EVERY Usenet server, EVERY anonymous remailer and EVERY newsgroup in existence! Automatic routing around censorship.
This program would only post to relevant newsgroups and therefore avoid Spam. Another twist that could be added would be to select ONE newsgroup in a list and post only to this one. Hmmmm... alt.usenet.censored.software, anyone? =)
Has this ever been done before?
2000-03-20
15:35 GMT
Dr Evil Submarine Base
Somewhere in the Marriana Trench.
Dr Evil:
"... We will subvert the Open Source movement, fork Linux, go IPO with Dr EviLinux(tm) and make millions of dollars!! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!"
[Stunned and embarassed silence around the table]
Number Two:
"[Clearing throat] Er... Dr Evil, sir... You cannot really fork Linux... It's controlled by that finnish guy Linus Torvalds... And the largest Linux companies in the world are actually more sought-after on Wall Street than (gasp!) our own Evil Corporation(tm)!"
Scott Evil:
"Yeah, you idiot! And any moron knows that Linux is protected by the GPL anyway! If you do something good with Linux, you have to release the code, and all your competitors can then incorporate it in their own distros! You are just an imbecile!"
Mini Me:
[Jumps on table and slaps Scott]
Scott Evil:
"OUCH! [incensed]I am going to kill you, you little piece of sh..."
Dr Evil:
"Zip it Scott! Mini-Me, I said no slapping while Daddy is working! Number Two! What is that [quote with fingers]Evil Corporation(tm)[quote with fingers]?"
Number Two:
"Well, you know, the software company that has some problems with the DoJ roght now? [whispering] The one that is based in Seattle? 65K+ bugs in their last released product?"
Dr Evil:
"Riiiiiiiiiight... That Evil Corporation(tm)"
[Thinks for a little while]
Dr Evil:
"Very well, then, I'll just have to come up with another plan to conquer the world and make plenty of money. Something which involves large nuclear weapons or some such. This time-traveling is so embarassing -- you just cannot keep up to date with all these latest technologies. Come Mini-Me! Daddy is going to teach you how to torture small animals while he thinks about all this"
[Dr Evil & Mini-Me exit stage left]
After testing extensively the different brands of flamewars available on the market, our SmashDot(tm) test center has decided to extensively analyze the performance of the following flame wars on geeks, nerds and system administrators. The results are as follow:
Of course, your mileage may vary. Honorable mentions include newbie questions, news for nerds that were posted before, the classic "Emacs vs vi" flame burst (unfortunately losing steam these days) and the "This does not belong on Slashdot!" flame war, which may well be a strong contender as long as
Since we certainly want the best, hottest and brightest flame wars for our own site, we'll stick with the tried-and-proven favourite: the Jon Katz flame war.
Jon Katz -- a good roasting guaranteed every time! Get yours today!
Another public-service testing from the SmashDot(tm) team!
Actually, "starting" an ISP in such a country is not that hard technologically speaking. Please remember that's what Open source is for: any third-world country can benefit from Linux/BSD (as well as SendMail/Apache/etc...) projects. These are, after all, proven OS, with a good track record, lots of sources of information and so on and so forth.
Also remember that PC is pretty much commodity hardware these days, which means it's fairly unexpensive, as long as the country you are working in has low import duties on these machines. In the worst possible case, I have known people (in Africa, for instance) who will smuggle (smaller) portable computers or even whole disassembled computers bought cheaply elsewhere in the world.
Thanks to the optimization done by open-source volunteers all over the globe, even low-end machines can handle pretty heavy workloads -- even ultra-cheap "obsolete" machines such as 486 and low-end Pentiums.
The real problems therefore are:
Also, please remember that in most of these countries, as sad as it is to say, you have very little (or none at all) legal recourse if you don't like what the government is doing. Democracy, even in the best of cases, is still, unfortunately, a very remote concept to the day-to-day life of most people in the Third World.
Finally, there is the little question of profit -- few individuals or corporations are wealthy enough to be able to afford a PC, let alone a 'net connection.
Just my US$ 0.02...
Consider the longstanding battles over encryption software export. Does anyone honestly believe forreign governments couldn't manage to get their hands on the 128-bit version of Netscape? Come on! Yet, the government still interfered here. It's important to remember this.
With all due respect, I fail to see why
First of all, please use the term "US Government". The US Government is the one that is at stake here. Other governments may or may not have the same kind of prohibition when it comes to supercomputers and "sensitive" countriesand/or uses.
Second, as I pointed out (and as you said yourself) regulations won't help the US Government stop the export of Beowulf clusters, precisely because the technology required for Beowulf clusters is available everywhere.
What matters is that, by putting regulation into place, the US government can now prosecute anyone who willingly exports that technology to "Freedonia" or any other terrorist country.
Since most of the people who run these countries are far from stupid, they'll simply execute some variation of what I outlined above: buy the technology as discreetly as possible, probably not in the US, through decoy companies and then ship it back to where they need it. US regulations will be avoided -- but these US regulations will be available in the case anyone is stupid enough to think they can directly sell Beowulf clusters to Freedonia or whatever.
Just my US$0.02...
Let's go through this real quick:
That's all there is to it, as far as I know. I should add that many "Freedonias", during the cold war, used the exact same procedures to illegally acquire hardware they were not allowed to buy... There are even tales of the (old) USSR acquiring Cray machines, when these were the "crown jewels" of US computing. Commodity hardware has just made this 100 times more simple...
Of course, someone had to do it... =)
Emacs has everything one desires, including the kitchen sink. Who needs a word processor, when you can have the GOD of text editors. Remember: UNIX is a process that runs under Emacs.
Of course, this entire comment is a complete joke. Sorry, I just could not resist...
Aaaaaah, the smell of flame wars in the wee hours of the morning. =)
- No, I don't think Micros~1 orchestrated this. They are certainly delighted by this article, though (and maybe even wrote part of it -- THAT would not be surprising).
- Solaris and Linux are insecure? Yes, but large DoS attacks could be done just as easily (more easily, in fact: see the BO2K post above) from insecure WinNT and Win95 machines connected to the Internet. Hey, as far as I know, Back Orifice 2000 was released first under WinNT, right? One should also remember that Yahoo was one of the first site targeted... and everyone knows that Yahoo runs FreeBSD (No flame, please!).
- Even if Solaris and Linux are to blame for the recent DoS epidemic, they can be secured much faster and much more completely than said WinNT servers. Remember, it only took a few hours to get a patch for the Linux "Ping of Death" IP stack attack. Now that the nasty crackers have got sysadmin running for cover, expect a soon-to-be-released-patch to correct this DoS issue.
- Finally, something that should be pointed out: DoS are a pain in the neck, but they do not compromise the security of credit card numbers (for instance). They just prevent the services offered by the target from being accessible. Yahoo was back online in a few hours and I fully expect all web servers running Open Source (whether *BSD or Linux) to survive this with minor inconvenineces at worst. Solaris and Windows NT are another matter entirely of course.
So the verdict is: this article is clueless FUD (surprise! surprise!). WinNT is insecure. Linux and Solaris are more secure. OpenBSD is secure by default. So there. Of course, this opinion is only worth what you paid to read it.I remember reading "Slan" when I was 14 or 15. Man, that was great science-fiction.
But, much more than that, it meant to much to me because it described my life. In the books, Slans are rejected, feared and hated for being different. Mr Van Vogt had hit on a very universal theme.
I also remember that, at the same time I was reading the book, me and some of my high-school friends were being rejected (and feared and ridiculed, etc...) for being the first kids on the block with a passion for micro-computers. That book was such a mirror image of my life. I kept re-reading it, when I was not busy hacking on the CP/M machines my high-school had. Even though I do not necessarily like the conclusion, the "politics" or the black/white plot logic of the book, I guess I'll always a soft spot for the hunted Slans -- strangers, geeks and nerds before these terms became mainstream.
He'll be missed.
I suppose you think up new ways to dis Microsoft in your sleep.
Wrong. Why?
Besides, if you want MS-positive articles, you are probably better off looking at Microsoft own website, not Slashdot!
Jesus God, get OUT more.
My name is neither Jesus, nor God. And I get "out" every once in a while, thank you. As a matter of fact, I am going to a show tonight.
Get a relationship.
Not with you, no. But thanks for the offer.
Go to the beach.
I'd love to. But I (unfortunately) do not live in a city with a beach nearby. Besides, in a lot of parts of the world, a beach in January is actually quite a cold and forbidding place. I have a suggestion: maybe you should get out of... let me guess... Sunny California? and see more of the world!
Stop playing Quake and Starcraft.
I stopped playing Quake long ago. I never played Starcraft. So there.
Stop looking for aliens with your spare CPU cycles and start helping actual humans on the streets of your hometown.
The great thing about computers is that I can do both. My computer is looking for aliens while I go out and (among other things) donate my blood and distribute food to homeless people.
What have you done lately?
Not that I _support_ Microsoft, but holding this degree of anger against them CAN'T be healthy.
I am "angry" because:
In short, MS is lying through its teeth. And such a lack of honesty makes me mad -- and it should make you mad, too, that a huge, multibillion dollar corporation, denounced recntly by the US DOJ as a "monopoly" has the gall to lie in such a way to its customers.
This being said, I really want you to feel OK -- I am not going to lose any sleep about MS or Bill Gates, really, as I have said above.
On the other hand, by attacking me personnaly, you simply prove this: MS drones do not know how to argue. You could have countered every argument I have presented above with reasoned facts and counter-claims. You did not, which is not surprising. After all, that's what Slashdot ACs are for, right?
Yours truly,
This marketroid piece was so full of holes it's not even funny anymore...
Microsoft has made a comprehensive effort to build Windows 2000 with security in mind, including having a staff of 15 people study the code for breaches, denials of service, and bugs.
15 people to review... What was it? 30 MILLION lines of code? And what was the qualification of these people? Script Kiddies??
A preliminary version of the product also was put on the Internet to enable users to look for security breaches, Valentine said. Within two weeks, four denials of service bugs were found, but no breaches were discovered, he said.
As Dr Evil would say: "Riiiiiiight"... Within two weeks, the NT2K server crashed so many times they decided to put it off-line. I'll let you, gentle reader, decide for yourself what that means...
Source code also was delivered to 70 agencies and universities around the world for their perusal.
*Yawn* Which Universities? Which Agencies? (Mindcraft???!!!) Names, references, Web site? Results of aforementioned "perusal"? Are these results published anywhere? (Probably not...) Were the "agencies" able to modify the source code?
As someone else said: "Microsoft is not an answer. Microsoft is a question. The answer is: No".
Read my lips Microsoft: Open-Source is going to bury you alive. Commodification of hardware, commodification of OS is the end of Bill's Evil Empire. The penguin and the demon will dance on your graves... (insert Dr Evil most sinister laughter here)
Hi!
I have heard many times that L0pht uses OpenBSD almost exclusively for their servers. Is that true? If so, could you please explain why (in a more detailed manner that just the obvious "it's been audited for security...") and also tell us if you contribute code back to OpenBSD.
Thanks!
Naming Georges Marshall as "Man of the Century" certainly is a good choice, and most of the points you raise excellent. Here are a few remarks of my own:
Well, that certainly isn't true. Most nations at the start of the Twentieth Century thought about expanding their existing empires and bring more people and territories under their domination. Even the USA were involved in colonialism at the time, with its "management" of the Philippines and other territories it won in the US-Spanish war. Most European nations (France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain, etc) had huge empires that spanned the globe -- and most of them considered as a "God-given" right the possibility to dominate other people and cultures. Remember: those were deeply racist times and the white people of the earth truly believed they were the ones to bring light, science, education and Christianity to the poor masses of the rest of the world. Democracy was for WASP, or, at the very least for Rich White Men (no women or "colored" accepted, thank you).
Again, this can be disputed: in most of Europe, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century were periods that saw an incredible surge in spiritism, the "New Age Religion" of that time. Many people then (as now) believed in spiritual planes, in angels and so on and so forth. It is true that science was elevated above everything else -- but most people at the time, even in the richest European countries, still lived in poverty and/or in an agrarian lifestyle, lived and die in the place they were born and totally ignored the world beyond the next village.
One may argue that this fascination with ideology came from the same simplistic vision of the future that was commonly accepted at the time: that science was going to solve every problem and allow us to live an abundant life. Communism and Socialism also came about because of the appaling conditions of the "working class" at the time. While that may not excuse the ignoble murders that followed, Marx (a 19th century prophet of doom) had many things to say, and many that ring true today. In particular, some of his visions about the limit of Capitalism still ring true today.
I would say, in general, that the start of the 20th century was an incredibly naive times -- most people truly reduced human beings to paper caricature and refused to see the complexity of both the world and the creatures that inhabit it.
IMHO, we never climbed out of the pit. We are just sinking down a little bit more slowly...
Let's face it: we are not getting any closer to world peace and cooperation. The one difference between now and 1942 is that the most powerful countries in the world are not fighting each other, as they were then.
On that, I totally agree with you. Marshall did not repeat the terrible, repugnant folly of the Treaty of Versailles and probably paved the way for both peace and prosperity... in Western Europe only.
... And many would argue today that he failed. The UN today is nothing more than an a source of interesting world statistics and a soapbox where poor people of the world can plead for help -- often with no result. It is also interesting to note that the USA, who helped create the UN in the first place, are right now one of its most constant enemies (for instance, because they do not pay their due to the UN). Sadly, the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, as become increasingly irrelevent as large corporations plunder and extort enormous concessions from the smallest and poorest nations of the world.
Money and brute force are the two most effective forces in the world today. This situation has been the same for most of mankind's history, and I am afraid it will stay this way for all of our history.
The key words here are "lip service". There is no "international" moral code. Morality is not recognized as an important factor in International Law. Morality does not exist as far as nations are concerned. Period.
Example? Tibet/China. Tibet has been oppressed by China for 20? 30 years? What have done to change this? Nothing! Why? Because China's power and headcount make most nation weary of confronting them... and most companies just salivate at the prospect of a prosperous China. Does it really matter China is not a democracy? Of course not -- don't be silly. Money talks.
As Dr Evil would say: "Right...". Well, just remember who it was that divided Europe (and most of the world) between them and Uncle "Joe" Stalin. FDR and Churchill. It was quite convenient to turn a blind eye when the tanks rolled in Prague, Warsaw or Budapest. Most of NATO and the USA hardly ever blinked at the time.
People in Eastern Europe may feel great (maybe just OK, actually) right now -- but people in Russia are not! And the quality of life of most people in Eastern Europe is still way below the rest of Western Europe. Not to mention Bulgaria or Romania, where living standards have been (incredibly) tumbling down from their already low position.
Well, "we" did not fry the planet because "they" also had the bomb. And, even then, "we" came awfully close to frying the planet a couple of times, thank you.
Dear Mr Brin, I am afraid that (like many other science-fiction writer) you succumb to the same idealistic vision you so forcefully (and rightfully) denounce at the start of your essay. We are not entering a Golden Age. There is no Golden Age -- just a long, slow crawl from one era of bloodshed to another. Humanity may have learned a lesson or two during the 20th Century, but probably not enough to pass it on to the next generation (or the generation after that). Proof? Neo-Nazi movements are on the rise again, thanks (in part) to the Internet.
Expect more massacres and ideologies in the near future, despite all the good work of Mr Marshall... One sad "feature" (read: bug) of humanity is that lessons are usually not learned very well, and forgotten as soon as another generation appears on the stage to replace the previous one.
Happy New Year!
He he he he... =)
I had forgotten that!
Can you imagine this: "I am sorry, Mr Gates, but we need all your personal computers plus all 15000 Microsoft NT servers? Please stand back, sir"
Of course, what you refer to is not funny, but I can't help Micro$soft (one of the founders of the SPA) deserves a taste of its own medicine...
=)
Of course, I am not a lawyer -- but you don't need to be one to see this kind of thing unfolding.
Just imagine this: "Mr Gates, how do you explain your enormous company violated the rights of Mr John Q. LoneHacker, the creator of BlaBlaBla, by stealing his intellectual property, which was protected under the GPL?". =)
Just my $0.02...
Overall, you have some valid questions. Questions that should be discussed and approched very seriously. I just feel you should take the time to write something serious instead of this fluff.
My most serious concern, as of now, is that corporations will take over the Genetic Code of humanity. The moral, economical and intellectual implications are simply staggering. Read "intellectual property, gene patent and corporate destruction of democracy" there and you have it in a nutshell.
That's all for now. This opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it... =)
Here are some information you may consider before starting your own cluster:
So, some positive factors, some negative ones. If you want to convince your University, always remind them that they can always count on the support of other universities and research centres the world over that are using this technology right now.
Good luck!
Is it me, or does that thing sound like (ahem) Prince?
You know, the old saw: "The Operating System formerly known as Windows CE..." =)
Sorry: "The Operating System formerly known as WinCE..."
And what does that "CE" stands for? "Crash Extremely fast"? "Carry Excess bagagge?" "Could not Exchange data with desktop?"
And what about the new name -- "Powered by Windows"? Why not "Crashed by Windows"? That's more like it...
Don't you just love heaping scorn on the largest software company in the world? What are we going to do once it has faded back into a richly deserved irrelevence?
Hi!
First of all, thanks a lot (to you and to the rest of the Debian team) for an oustanding job!
Several quick questions:
(A) What is exactly the BSD/Debian project? What are its goals? Is it officially supported by the Debian project, or is it just some sort of personal projects for some Debian programmers?
(B) When can we expect a release of the GNU/HURD? Do you think the HURD is the next great thing and that we'll all have to leave Linux/*BSD to install it on our machines?
(C) On a more personal note... how do you manage all this work? Jolt, Coca-Cola, designer drugs or just good old plain caffeine? Do you receive extra credit for working on Debian during your studies? =)
Thanks again -- keep up the good work!
Frankly, this is getting very disheartening.
Isn't it striking that the two (democratic) countries that seem the closest to implementing far-and-wide, liberty-squashing legislation are two of the most important members of the Commonwealth?
I do hope this trend is not going to spread any further -- I'd hate to see Canada, the European Union and the United States implement such brain-dead laws...
Now, the question is: what can we do to fight this trend? Re-create PPP/PPTP/encrypted links to/from Australia to bypass the censorship? Protest and scream with our Australian friends until we are blue in the face?
What on earth do we have to do to be left alone by clueless politicians?
One thing that Richard Stallman did not take into account is that the UK is part of the European Union. As such, it is bound to respect the European Convention on Human Rights, which is mandatory to join the EU.
In case this law was passed (which remains to be seen -- we may even have a rare Labour/Tory bipartisan front against this law) and a British citizen lands in prison because of it, I guess there would two major consequences: (a) an outcry all over Europe against the UK and (b) an appeal by said British citizen to the EU Human rights court, whose decision would be binding on both British judicial institutions and (in general) other European courts.
Not to mention Amnesty International, which would probably throw up a ruckus over it. Interesting times to be a Britsih citizen, for sure. First BSE, then this. Hmmmm... Are these related?
=)