How many/.-ers are running Windows, either @home or @work? Right! As long as people keep dumping insane amounts of cash at MSFT, this madness will go on and on and on... Yawn!
The problem for those countries is that they don't have enough valuta for their population. Therefore, they strongly regulate what their citizens are allowed to do with their local money. Especially, they don't allow people to export a very scare resource.
It's not that the people there were all poor (.50 USD is not that much for them either), it's that they don't have access to international money. I know it's a pain in the neck to live there.
You could use a BOINC-based approach. For every completed work unit, you get permission to send N mails. Every recipient organization could designate a number of eligible BOINC projects (SETI or whatever).
This would be better than real money, which would segretate against poor countries without freely exchangeable valuta.
Not everyone in the world does have access to universal currency. In some countries, you need special permission by the government to buy exchangeable currencies (like, say, USD or EUR). They even put a stamp in your passport if you did, so you don't buy too much! Oh, and btw., most spam doesn't come from there, but from countries with free valuta.
Would you really want to erect yet another economic wall between "us" and "them"?
Well, definitely not every country, since although being a US citizen I reside in the United Kingdom, and there's no national ID card there. Big Brother Blunkett wants to introduce one, but it's not gone far yet.
Yes, you have a point here. Please add the United Kingdom to the tiny list of countries that don't have national ID cards (yet). I'll use more careful wording next time. Sorry.
Usually I have to show my passport, show some documentation proving that I live at my address (like utility statements),
I know that too. It's a pain in the neck, because your current address is normally not recorded in your passport. Unless you happen to live long enough in a country, so that you can obtain a new passport with your new address in it.
But I just wanted to point out that your gross exaggeration is a case of hyperbole. And it's wrong.
Why would it be wrong? Just because I was too lazy to list every exception to the rule?
As you've pointed out yourself: a single point of contact for your ID would have been preferable. I'd prefer NOT to be dependent upon some random companies (bills), just to prove that I'm indeed myself. A nice nationwide (worldwide?) database that associates my ID with a unique set of biometric data would actually protect me from accidentally loosing my identity. With a central database, all I have to do is to show up at a registration desk, look into an eye-scanner and presto, I get a new ID card. That's definitely more convenient than, say, gathering utility bills, and a whole lot of other documents that may as well have been lost/stolen/destroyed...
There's a drawback to a nation-wide ID database too. You have to be very careful what data is stored there. States usually have a giant appetite for additional private data: "Why not add XYZ to the ID database? It would prevent ABC." Unless the population resists such attempts, a whole lot of informations will be stored about you in one central location. Then it won't be such a good idea anymore.
National ID cards are used everywhere in the world, except the US. Yet people are no more nor less safe because of this.
It's not the national ID that's a problem. This database is probably the best secured in a country. Even if it got broken into, there's nothing interesting there: just your name, photograph, address (perhaps a trail of addresses), and perhaps some biometric identification (if the photograph is not enough) just in case you lost your ID card and needed a new one.
It is the whole bunch of small, amateurish or corporate databases, where you submit your data that are much more vulnerable: utilities, phone company, bank, driver licenses, health insurance, employer or school,...
Private investigators usually don't bother to query a national ID registry; that's way too dangerous and usually heavily punished. They gather informations about you at the weakest link; through direct observation, but also by shopping with all those small databases (yes, it's not always legal, but as long as you don't get caught, so what?).
If you have concerns about the privacy of your data, you'll have a hard time avoiding each and every company out there. It's already too late to turn back time. All your data are belong to us!
know it has taken some bad decisions and now lacks critical mass, but perhaps the Hurd is the way to go... it should enable better isolation of disruptive development, and enable kernel development to continue adding features.
The Hurd's biggest problem right now is a lack of developers. Right now a few core hackers are doing a formidable job at porting the Hurd from Mach to L4, a modern research microkernel with extremely low IPC latency. This redesign is also attempting to learn from earlier mistakes. The current Hurd hackers could need a helping hand from capable developers who are willing to learn a new programming paradigm, but also who are seeking fun doing something new.
The basic design of the Hurd is very stable and provides a good insulation between the different servers. And it is there, with X11 support and all.
The beauty of the Hurd is that you can, as a developer, be extremely creative. Almost anything can run as userland process, including device drivers, memory managers, file system server, heck even per-task userland schedulers (that is, once the L4 port is complete)! You are not forced to use the one and only approved kernel infrastructure, if you want to do unusual things. The Hurd is really about freedom of choice.
The Hurd's philosophy is also more Unix-like: write small servers that are doing a simple job, then combine them in creative and unusual ways. Linux has (sadly) become one behemoth of a program. Granted, it is somewhat modular, yet you're still limited in the way its components can be mixed and matched together. Let's go back to the Unix philosophy. It worked well in the past, and didn't fail us yet.
That's exactly the reason why Microsoft offering source code insight to the chinese (or other) government is a joke. As long as they can't compile everything themselves, they can never be sure to have a non-bugged (no pun intended) binary distribution.
In the world of cryptography, "proprietary" means weak and untested.
Anyway: "proprietary" here means obscure algorithms. Do you really think that hackers wont be able to black-box test them and circumvent whatever Google is trying to hide? Security through obscurity doesn't work.
export bans on supercomputers, weapon guidance and control systems, advanced communication systems etc.
This would be just as ineffective as the earlier crypto ban. Many countries in europe and asia have darn good scientists and engineers too. It isn't that hard for them to manufacture those things (and they actually do already have quite competitive homegrown solutions).
I seriously doubt the Department of Commerce will bother if their PCs are running Linux or a pirated Windows
They will. All it takes is a little (well not so little, but you get my point) cash from MS to Congress and to the Government and pronto, you've got new legislation. Or how do you think did we got slammed with the DMCA?
This happens after a visit and an alarmist speech AND it hasn't worked at all.
Why do you assume that a mere speech will change things? Don't forget that we're talking politics (and business) here! Perhaps MSFT's "buying power" with malaysian government officials wasn't up to par this time?
I've talked to many members of the european parliament about software patents. As FFII correctly reports, the representatives are really divided about this issue. A majority is just plain ignorant of the problem, and will vote according to the wishes of the party that sent them in the parliament (probably pro swpat).
Others are genuinely interested in avoiding the blunders of the US patent system, but they don't know exactly how to do it. The most favored solution would be to patent computer based innovations that are having a "technical" impact. The idea being to protect software controlling industrial robots and some such. Unfortunately, the definition of "technical impact" is being disputed and very blurry, to say the least.
Then there's the fraction of representatives who have fallen prey to the IP lawyer lobby group. They really believe that they are helping innovation by unifying the already present patent laws in all EU countries.
All in all, it looks like we've lost this battle to the giant IP/patent holders. Perhaps we didn't protest loud enough and have been widely ignored by the mass media. That's very sad indeed.
Unless you put something in the public domain, you can't just remove the copyright. But you, as a copyright holder, may license the general public to copy your work. This is exactly what software developers do when they GPL- or BSD-license their code. They still own the copyright, but they legally grant you a license to copy.
The question is wether Moore owns the copyright at all. Only the legal owners may grant a license to copy.
Slashdot Mirror
but they now have domination of the market..
How many /.-ers are running Windows, either @home or @work? Right! As long as people keep dumping insane amounts of cash at MSFT, this madness will go on and on and on... Yawn!
Or was it "The Dead Past"? Oh, waitaminute! That would have infringed Asimov's copyright (to a great story, btw.). Of course, it's OT here.
The problem for those countries is that they don't have enough valuta for their population. Therefore, they strongly regulate what their citizens are allowed to do with their local money. Especially, they don't allow people to export a very scare resource.
It's not that the people there were all poor (.50 USD is not that much for them either), it's that they don't have access to international money. I know it's a pain in the neck to live there.
You could use a BOINC-based approach. For every completed work unit, you get permission to send N mails. Every recipient organization could designate a number of eligible BOINC projects (SETI or whatever).
This would be better than real money, which would segretate against poor countries without freely exchangeable valuta.
Not everyone in the world does have access to universal currency. In some countries, you need special permission by the government to buy exchangeable currencies (like, say, USD or EUR). They even put a stamp in your passport if you did, so you don't buy too much! Oh, and btw., most spam doesn't come from there, but from countries with free valuta.
Would you really want to erect yet another economic wall between "us" and "them"?
Agreed. But how long will insert-your-favorite-anti-spam-solution-here work until it is circumvented?
Public money, Public domain
Public domain != BSD-style license.
(But let's not get too picky here.)
Well, definitely not every country, since although being a US citizen I reside in the United Kingdom, and there's no national ID card there. Big Brother Blunkett wants to introduce one, but it's not gone far yet.
Yes, you have a point here. Please add the United Kingdom to the tiny list of countries that don't have national ID cards (yet). I'll use more careful wording next time. Sorry.
Usually I have to show my passport, show some documentation proving that I live at my address (like utility statements),
I know that too. It's a pain in the neck, because your current address is normally not recorded in your passport. Unless you happen to live long enough in a country, so that you can obtain a new passport with your new address in it.
But I just wanted to point out that your gross exaggeration is a case of hyperbole. And it's wrong.
Why would it be wrong? Just because I was too lazy to list every exception to the rule?
As you've pointed out yourself: a single point of contact for your ID would have been preferable. I'd prefer NOT to be dependent upon some random companies (bills), just to prove that I'm indeed myself. A nice nationwide (worldwide?) database that associates my ID with a unique set of biometric data would actually protect me from accidentally loosing my identity. With a central database, all I have to do is to show up at a registration desk, look into an eye-scanner and presto, I get a new ID card. That's definitely more convenient than, say, gathering utility bills, and a whole lot of other documents that may as well have been lost/stolen/destroyed...
There's a drawback to a nation-wide ID database too. You have to be very careful what data is stored there. States usually have a giant appetite for additional private data: "Why not add XYZ to the ID database? It would prevent ABC." Unless the population resists such attempts, a whole lot of informations will be stored about you in one central location. Then it won't be such a good idea anymore.
National ID cards are used everywhere in the world, except the US. Yet people are no more nor less safe because of this.
It's not the national ID that's a problem. This database is probably the best secured in a country. Even if it got broken into, there's nothing interesting there: just your name, photograph, address (perhaps a trail of addresses), and perhaps some biometric identification (if the photograph is not enough) just in case you lost your ID card and needed a new one.
It is the whole bunch of small, amateurish or corporate databases, where you submit your data that are much more vulnerable: utilities, phone company, bank, driver licenses, health insurance, employer or school,...
Private investigators usually don't bother to query a national ID registry; that's way too dangerous and usually heavily punished. They gather informations about you at the weakest link; through direct observation, but also by shopping with all those small databases (yes, it's not always legal, but as long as you don't get caught, so what?).
If you have concerns about the privacy of your data, you'll have a hard time avoiding each and every company out there. It's already too late to turn back time. All your data are belong to us!
Right. If every personal record is, say, 256 bytes or so, that's still an awful lot of very sensitive data.
Spammers exchange lists of verified e-mail addresses every day. Those files don't have to be that big, yet they cause a lot of trouble anyway!
know it has taken some bad decisions and now lacks critical mass, but perhaps the Hurd is the way to go... it should enable better isolation of disruptive development, and enable kernel development to continue adding features.
The Hurd's biggest problem right now is a lack of developers. Right now a few core hackers are doing a formidable job at porting the Hurd from Mach to L4, a modern research microkernel with extremely low IPC latency. This redesign is also attempting to learn from earlier mistakes. The current Hurd hackers could need a helping hand from capable developers who are willing to learn a new programming paradigm, but also who are seeking fun doing something new.
The basic design of the Hurd is very stable and provides a good insulation between the different servers. And it is there, with X11 support and all.
The beauty of the Hurd is that you can, as a developer, be extremely creative. Almost anything can run as userland process, including device drivers, memory managers, file system server, heck even per-task userland schedulers (that is, once the L4 port is complete)! You are not forced to use the one and only approved kernel infrastructure, if you want to do unusual things. The Hurd is really about freedom of choice.
The Hurd's philosophy is also more Unix-like: write small servers that are doing a simple job, then combine them in creative and unusual ways. Linux has (sadly) become one behemoth of a program. Granted, it is somewhat modular, yet you're still limited in the way its components can be mixed and matched together. Let's go back to the Unix philosophy. It worked well in the past, and didn't fail us yet.
How long until a master key is leaked from some government agency? Kind of DeCSS for GSM?
...here (sorry, german-only site). BoD has been operating since many years already. It's amazing that it's not more popular.
That's exactly the reason why Microsoft offering source code insight to the chinese (or other) government is a joke. As long as they can't compile everything themselves, they can never be sure to have a non-bugged (no pun intended) binary distribution.
In the world of cryptography, "proprietary" means weak and untested.
Anyway: "proprietary" here means obscure algorithms. Do you really think that hackers wont be able to black-box test them and circumvent whatever Google is trying to hide? Security through obscurity doesn't work.
(display "#t\n")
export bans on supercomputers, weapon guidance and control systems, advanced communication systems etc.
This would be just as ineffective as the earlier crypto ban. Many countries in europe and asia have darn good scientists and engineers too. It isn't that hard for them to manufacture those things (and they actually do already have quite competitive homegrown solutions).
I seriously doubt the Department of Commerce will bother if their PCs are running Linux or a pirated Windows
They will. All it takes is a little (well not so little, but you get my point) cash from MS to Congress and to the Government and pronto, you've got new legislation. Or how do you think did we got slammed with the DMCA?
This happens after a visit and an alarmist speech AND it hasn't worked at all.
Why do you assume that a mere speech will change things? Don't forget that we're talking politics (and business) here! Perhaps MSFT's "buying power" with malaysian government officials wasn't up to par this time?
No, but it will be used to [cross-]compile it!
What's your username again?
*mumble*
>clickety click...< Now you have plenty of free disk space.
What do you think cellphones are for?
I've talked to many members of the european parliament about software patents. As FFII correctly reports, the representatives are really divided about this issue. A majority is just plain ignorant of the problem, and will vote according to the wishes of the party that sent them in the parliament (probably pro swpat).
Others are genuinely interested in avoiding the blunders of the US patent system, but they don't know exactly how to do it. The most favored solution would be to patent computer based innovations that are having a "technical" impact. The idea being to protect software controlling industrial robots and some such. Unfortunately, the definition of "technical impact" is being disputed and very blurry, to say the least.
Then there's the fraction of representatives who have fallen prey to the IP lawyer lobby group. They really believe that they are helping innovation by unifying the already present patent laws in all EU countries.
All in all, it looks like we've lost this battle to the giant IP/patent holders. Perhaps we didn't protest loud enough and have been widely ignored by the mass media. That's very sad indeed.
pay for things that they neither want nor need.
Or already have?
People getting confused that Solaris 2.2 > Solaris 2.10 generally don't have an IT budget to order Sun's expensive machines... Or do they?
Unless you put something in the public domain, you can't just remove the copyright. But you, as a copyright holder, may license the general public to copy your work. This is exactly what software developers do when they GPL- or BSD-license their code. They still own the copyright, but they legally grant you a license to copy.
The question is wether Moore owns the copyright at all. Only the legal owners may grant a license to copy.