I believe that I understand Bruce's point #5. Let's say that I'm going to download the Linux kernel from RedHat. And let's say that I want to be sure that it's the real Linux kernel instead of some trojaned thing. So I check the signature (assuming that RedHat actually signed it...)
But how would it not be the real executable? I only see two possibilities:
1. Somebody hacked into RedHat's servers and overwrote the executable. But if they did that, why not just overwrite the signature too? (I know, it isn't that simple if the signature mechanism uses a public key, which I suspect that it does. Then you would have to have access to a valid RedHat private key to sign the bad executable. But you could just delete the signature instead, making it look like RedHat didn't bother to sign the file.)
2. Somebody is playing with you via DNS or ARP poisoning or some such, and you aren't going to RedHat at all. But the exact same argument applies - they just remove the signature, and who's to know? (Well, everybody knows who is checking signatures, but everybody assumes "they just didn't sign it" rather than "oops, hostile action!")
So the point is that signatures don't really protect you here, unless you are really paranoid, and in practice, very few people really operate consistently in paranoid mode...
the city is expected to be under water by the year 2100.
Um, dude, the city is under water right now. I don't mean just the flooding from Katrina - New Orleans has large areas that are 8 or 10 feet below sea level. So in a century, it has large parts that are 11 or 13 feet below sea level. That's worse, but not majorly worse.
First, the work is protected by copyright. It's released under a license that gives other people the right to use it in specific ways. But the work is still copyrighted. In this way, it is similar to the GPL, and the parent suffers from a confusion that seems common about the GPL.
Second, there is a non-commercial version of the CCL. This lets the author/artist sue anyone making money from his/her work, while still releasing it under the CCL.
Google is evil because it hires a lot of people for good money, attracts investment, and is successful.
Why do we consider Microsoft evil? Is it equivalent to Google's evil? Well, no, it isn't. Stealing ideas, actively trying to destroy competition, lying in court, producing half-working crap and using a monopoly to force it down everybody's throat... is that morally equivalent to what Google is doing?
Morals seem to be rather twisted in your world. I can only name one of my friends that I have lied to, and I rather wish I could say that there were zero.
Well, Solaris x86 is free - it's under an open source license.
But is it as free as Linux? Well, no, I personally don't think it is. And so I'm supposed to ditch Linux for something with less driver support and less freedom? Why would I want to do that?
Ever hear of "the law of unintended consequences"?
They're trying to not mess up all the ways that GPLed code is used. That's not easy, because it's used a lot of different ways. And, they are trying to build a license that will not fail when subjected to the next ten years' worth of (currently) unknown attacks. (Look at how GPL 2 stood up under SCO's attack, and you'll see what I mean.)
This isn't just "slap together a license, and we'll fix it next week if we don't get it right the first time". Since some some projects don't use the "or any later version" clause, some code will probably be licensed under GPL 3 forever. And seeing from here to forever is hard, even on a clear day...
Isn't most of the Linux kernel licensed under GPL 2 only? Doesn't that mean that, no, it can't fork, new license or not?
I mean, to fork it (to use GPL 3), you'd have to (for each file) find everybody who has ever made changes to that file (unless the changes have since been replaced) and get their permission to license that under GPL 3. If they refuse, you have to re-write the section that their changes are in (or the whole file). This doesn't seem realistic...
The question is about whether Microsoft can ever give us freedom like OSS can. The reply is all about integration vs. modularity trade-offs. Hello? Freedom is not the same thing as modularity!
But then, right at the end of that reply, he says that 99% of Microsoft's Shared Source stuff comes with full redistribution rights. Well, that sounds like he's actually (finally) talking about freedom. Does anyone know the Shared Source terms enough to comment on whether this is "real" freedom, or whether it comes with fine print that makes the "freedom" more apparent than real?
Some time ago, there was a serial killer named Ted Bundy. He killed several people (more than 20, IIRC). He was either sentenced to life in prison, or to death, I forget which. He escaped from prison, and killed (four?) more people. He was captured again...
What are you going to do at this point? Assume that he won't escape again? He's shown that he can. Assume that, if he does escape, he won't kill anyone the next time. Right...
In fact, he was sentenced to death (for the four murders) and executed in Florida.
You'd rather see a million people sit for life in jail than have one innocent person wrongly executed? So would I. But it isn't that simple. A few of those million will escape. Some of those escapees will kill people. How many innocent people do you want to be murdered in their homes to keep one innocent person from being wrongly executed?
(I don't have a great answer. My point is that the question isn't that simple.)
...the baby might not want to be born to a druggie mom with fetal alchohol syndrome
I really disagree with this view. When I see that over 50% of the kids "born to druggie moms with fetal alcohol syndrome" decide that their life isn't worth living, and therefore commit suicide, I will consider this viewpoint to have merit. Until then, let us note that the people involved, by a vast majority, decide that they actually want to live their lives, lousy though they may be.
How, once you have hidden every trace of an anonymous source's identity, and someone contacts you claiming to by the same anonymous source, how do prove (even to yourself) that they are or are not?
The source could take care of this by telling you a code word that would appear in the next communication. The reporter could also tell the source what code word to use next (unless the source was using a one-way communication channel such as a letter or an e-mail with a forged header).
Other than such a mechanism, though... how could you tell?
As I understand it, what you say is true only if SCO wins. Basically, you can assert some defense in a court case, and lose, and in the next court case assert something different. No problem. But if you win, then you're stuck with what you asserted in the case you won.
So if SCO were to win with the "GPL not enforceable" nonsense (unlikely), then yes, a GPL developer could probably come after them. (SCO's preferred position, that therefore everything GPLed becomes public domain, is not going to happen. If it does, it will not survive appeal.)
SCO does not have any moral right to use GPL software if they think (or publicly say) that it is unconstitutional. But since the GPL does not have (as far as I can tell) a clause that revokes your license if you badmouth the GPL, SCO does have the legal right to use GPL software, and that right is given them by the GPL - the very same GPL that they are claiming is unconstitutional.
And yes, I have read the GPL.
(IIRC, IBM has as one of their counterclaims that SCO's public statements about the GPL mean that they have renounced the GPL and therefore have no rights to distribute GPLed code. IANAL, but I don't know if the court is going to agree. I think it's a weak claim, myself, but it would keep people like SCO from talking out of both sides of their mouth...)
You can't crash a Tandem system with a bucket of water. You need two buckets of water...
See, that was kind of the point of Tandem systems. They had redundant CPUs, and the OS kept them in sync. So if you lose one CPU to some psychopath with a bucket of water, the other one keeps runnning, and your system stays intact.
... because the stream has to be decrypted in real time. And it's a huge stream - say, 1280 X 1024 pixels X 3 bytes/pixel X 60 frames/second = 235929600 bytes/second. That gives the monitor 4.24 nanoseconds to decode each byte. I doubt they can do Rijndael in that time...
So it's either lame crypto or no crypto, and so my guess is a splitter will be adequate to grab the stream. You might need to decrypt it as a post-processing step, but I think it will probably not be that hard to do.
I stole this, but it's too good not to put in here. Some homeschoolers, when people bring up "socialization", say: "Whenever we worry that the kids aren't getting socialized, we pull them into the bathroom and beat them up for their lunch money."
Yeah, they aren't getting "socialized" the Public School Way. Is that a bad thing? NO! Public school socialization teaches them to be incredibly susceptible to peer pressure, to be superficial and shallow, to be TV viewers and consumers... to completely waste their potential as human beings. It also exposes them to bullying and violence.
Public school socialization is a big part of the problem. Home schoolers don't get that socialization? That's one of the best arguments for home schooling you will ever make.
It's called a settlement. That's where you do something that the other side finds acceptable, and they don't sue you. If they have a legitimate court case against you, both sides can win from this. And society wins, too, because they don't have that particular case clogging up the courts.
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I believe that I understand Bruce's point #5. Let's say that I'm going to download the Linux kernel from RedHat. And let's say that I want to be sure that it's the real Linux kernel instead of some trojaned thing. So I check the signature (assuming that RedHat actually signed it...)
But how would it not be the real executable? I only see two possibilities:
1. Somebody hacked into RedHat's servers and overwrote the executable. But if they did that, why not just overwrite the signature too? (I know, it isn't that simple if the signature mechanism uses a public key, which I suspect that it does. Then you would have to have access to a valid RedHat private key to sign the bad executable. But you could just delete the signature instead, making it look like RedHat didn't bother to sign the file.)
2. Somebody is playing with you via DNS or ARP poisoning or some such, and you aren't going to RedHat at all. But the exact same argument applies - they just remove the signature, and who's to know? (Well, everybody knows who is checking signatures, but everybody assumes "they just didn't sign it" rather than "oops, hostile action!")
So the point is that signatures don't really protect you here, unless you are really paranoid, and in practice, very few people really operate consistently in paranoid mode...
Um, dude, the city is under water right now. I don't mean just the flooding from Katrina - New Orleans has large areas that are 8 or 10 feet below sea level. So in a century, it has large parts that are 11 or 13 feet below sea level. That's worse, but not majorly worse.
Second, there is a non-commercial version of the CCL. This lets the author/artist sue anyone making money from his/her work, while still releasing it under the CCL.
Google is evil because it hires a lot of people for good money, attracts investment, and is successful.
Why do we consider Microsoft evil? Is it equivalent to Google's evil? Well, no, it isn't. Stealing ideas, actively trying to destroy competition, lying in court, producing half-working crap and using a monopoly to force it down everybody's throat... is that morally equivalent to what Google is doing?
Didn't think so.
Morals seem to be rather twisted in your world. I can only name one of my friends that I have lied to, and I rather wish I could say that there were zero.
It's not offtopic at all. It seems to me that the possibility of abuse is precisely the topic here.
I'm really hoping not to have an immediate need...
But is it as free as Linux? Well, no, I personally don't think it is. And so I'm supposed to ditch Linux for something with less driver support and less freedom? Why would I want to do that?
They're trying to not mess up all the ways that GPLed code is used. That's not easy, because it's used a lot of different ways. And, they are trying to build a license that will not fail when subjected to the next ten years' worth of (currently) unknown attacks. (Look at how GPL 2 stood up under SCO's attack, and you'll see what I mean.)
This isn't just "slap together a license, and we'll fix it next week if we don't get it right the first time". Since some some projects don't use the "or any later version" clause, some code will probably be licensed under GPL 3 forever. And seeing from here to forever is hard, even on a clear day...
Isn't most of the Linux kernel licensed under GPL 2 only? Doesn't that mean that, no, it can't fork, new license or not?
I mean, to fork it (to use GPL 3), you'd have to (for each file) find everybody who has ever made changes to that file (unless the changes have since been replaced) and get their permission to license that under GPL 3. If they refuse, you have to re-write the section that their changes are in (or the whole file). This doesn't seem realistic...
But then, right at the end of that reply, he says that 99% of Microsoft's Shared Source stuff comes with full redistribution rights. Well, that sounds like he's actually (finally) talking about freedom. Does anyone know the Shared Source terms enough to comment on whether this is "real" freedom, or whether it comes with fine print that makes the "freedom" more apparent than real?
I suspect that the parent's point is true. It is also about the most depressing thing I have read today.
Some time ago, there was a serial killer named Ted Bundy. He killed several people (more than 20, IIRC). He was either sentenced to life in prison, or to death, I forget which. He escaped from prison, and killed (four?) more people. He was captured again...
What are you going to do at this point? Assume that he won't escape again? He's shown that he can. Assume that, if he does escape, he won't kill anyone the next time. Right...
In fact, he was sentenced to death (for the four murders) and executed in Florida.
You'd rather see a million people sit for life in jail than have one innocent person wrongly executed? So would I. But it isn't that simple. A few of those million will escape. Some of those escapees will kill people. How many innocent people do you want to be murdered in their homes to keep one innocent person from being wrongly executed?
(I don't have a great answer. My point is that the question isn't that simple.)
I really disagree with this view. When I see that over 50% of the kids "born to druggie moms with fetal alcohol syndrome" decide that their life isn't worth living, and therefore commit suicide, I will consider this viewpoint to have merit. Until then, let us note that the people involved, by a vast majority, decide that they actually want to live their lives, lousy though they may be.
What right do we have to decide otherwise?
How, once you have hidden every trace of an anonymous source's identity, and someone contacts you claiming to by the same anonymous source, how do prove (even to yourself) that they are or are not?
The source could take care of this by telling you a code word that would appear in the next communication. The reporter could also tell the source what code word to use next (unless the source was using a one-way communication channel such as a letter or an e-mail with a forged header).
Other than such a mechanism, though... how could you tell?
As I understand it, what you say is true only if SCO wins. Basically, you can assert some defense in a court case, and lose, and in the next court case assert something different. No problem. But if you win, then you're stuck with what you asserted in the case you won.
So if SCO were to win with the "GPL not enforceable" nonsense (unlikely), then yes, a GPL developer could probably come after them. (SCO's preferred position, that therefore everything GPLed becomes public domain, is not going to happen. If it does, it will not survive appeal.)
In case it is not already obvious, IANAL.
And yes, I have read the GPL.
(IIRC, IBM has as one of their counterclaims that SCO's public statements about the GPL mean that they have renounced the GPL and therefore have no rights to distribute GPLed code. IANAL, but I don't know if the court is going to agree. I think it's a weak claim, myself, but it would keep people like SCO from talking out of both sides of their mouth...)
Also note that they are going to try this approach. If it doesn't work out, I expect that Linus (ever the pragmatist) will drop it rather quickly...
When you add stuff to a Linux box, Microsoft's business model breaks.
Microsoft: Which cleaners would you like to be taken to today?
See, that was kind of the point of Tandem systems. They had redundant CPUs, and the OS kept them in sync. So if you lose one CPU to some psychopath with a bucket of water, the other one keeps runnning, and your system stays intact.
When a mainframe becomes loaded with spyware, you do not throw it in the dumpster!
... because the stream has to be decrypted in real time. And it's a huge stream - say, 1280 X 1024 pixels X 3 bytes/pixel X 60 frames/second = 235929600 bytes/second. That gives the monitor 4.24 nanoseconds to decode each byte. I doubt they can do Rijndael in that time...
So it's either lame crypto or no crypto, and so my guess is a splitter will be adequate to grab the stream. You might need to decrypt it as a post-processing step, but I think it will probably not be that hard to do.
How about Natalie Portman as Pamela Jones, the paralegal behind Groklaw?
On the other hand, Tom Cruise as an abstract entity... hmm... maybe that could work...
I stole this, but it's too good not to put in here. Some homeschoolers, when people bring up "socialization", say: "Whenever we worry that the kids aren't getting socialized, we pull them into the bathroom and beat them up for their lunch money."
Yeah, they aren't getting "socialized" the Public School Way. Is that a bad thing? NO! Public school socialization teaches them to be incredibly susceptible to peer pressure, to be superficial and shallow, to be TV viewers and consumers... to completely waste their potential as human beings. It also exposes them to bullying and violence.
Public school socialization is a big part of the problem. Home schoolers don't get that socialization? That's one of the best arguments for home schooling you will ever make.
Insightful? Hardly. More like clueless...