The GNU copyleft license uses copyright to a purpose diametrically opposed to the original intent of copyright law. Hence the nickname. But it still uses the fact that the author has copyright to do its magic to guarantee that others cannot misuse (ie make proprietary) the freely released code.
So yes, his words are copyrighted by Richard Stallman. But what would he do with that copyright? Why make sure that nobody used his words in a way he disapproved of!
The entertainment issue has an attitude towards approaching marketing and legal issues with overwhelming force. However the MPAA is not the first marketing machine that Linux has taken on. Think, for instance, of the Microsoft juggernaught. Yet Linux advocates took that on, and have done a lot more than just leave a dent.
So every time you see an article like this, take the time out to write a polite and informative letter of explanation to the reporter and to the editors of the paper. The key is to be polite and informative.
And remember this. It takes a stroke of inspired idiocy to position yourself in the teeth of a movement like Linux. To start your lawsuits with Chris DiBona, a central figure in the most successful IPO in history. To attempt to, as the Fool put it, sue the entire Internet. Sure, the MPAA machine can be frightening. But that does not mean that they have not bitten off a lot more than they can chew...
The fact is that while a lot of people installed 2.2.0, it was much closer to a trial candidate than a gold release. Even after 2.2.x was released it was some time before an official distribution would be based on it, Linus knew that, and so in no way could that version be considered one that (like Win2K) the end consumer would be expected to buy.
These bugs are in the version that Microsoft expected people to pay money for.
Besides which, the bug in question was, "Crash Linux". It wasn't a remotely exploitable hole, you needed to already have access to the box to (ab)use it.
You need to read more carefully. As the Fool said, there have been tools since 1997 that just grab the decrypted signals going to the video card and save that.
Really, you don't need to understand CSS to copy CSS encrypted stuff. It is needed if you want to make players without paying licensing fees. And that is what this case is about.
I just wanted to be sure that they saw it. (They did.) According to the response I got it is in a queue and should get tested today or tomorrow.
Cheers, Ben
And now try to make them happy that they did it!
on
Slash v0.9 Released
·
· Score: 3
Here is the letter that I sent to do my part...
What does this do?
1. I fixed the bug which meant that if you typed , previewed, then posted your post did not match your preview. (I needed to add a new stripByMode mode for this.)
2. I fixed the bug that made exttrans the same as plaintext.
3. I added a nice feature that allows people to indent lines just by indenting their submitted text. (eg If people try to paste Python code, it will now display.)
4. I made a minor modification to make the displayed comments a little easier for humans to read.
5. I modified your "Reduce the count of multiple lines" to not just reduce them by 2/3, but to actually keep them to a max of 2. I made them substantially harder to fool.
All in all little stuff that had been bugging me for a looong time...
My stupid email may cause these diffs to wrap. Make the obvious fix by hand if it does...
The for loop is explicitly sequential. The notation is not. If dealing with operations with potential side-effects this notation actually contains a promise that you don't have to worry about side-effects - which allows the compiler to generate more parallel code. This in turn can be optimized to be done with vector operations, or (in a different problem domain) across chips.
In other words the for loop is a barrier to optimization since in order to observe certain classes of optimizations the compiler has to figure out your code (and verify - for instance - whether the value of i has to wind up being calculated.)
I have been married for just shy of a decade and I have to tell you that you are wrong. Sure, if you buy into a set of social roles and just live that - well people aren't cardboard cut-outs. But if you realize that and work to keep a relationship alive - well I know people who are going strong for a lot longer than I have been married!
Remember Melissa? It didn't do anything other than make a private note that it had visited and send emails. Think that Unix permissions help against something like this?
Most people keep a lot of important data writable by themselves in their home directory. Sure, "nothing important" may have been deleted, but you could still lose all of your files.
Recall the Internet Worm? This came up before. There was nothing special about it, it just was a worm that could spread itself without any human action. That made its generation time a fraction of a second (as opposed to the 15-minutes to an hour for Melissa), which resulted in its almost instantaneous spread to every machine it could infect. Unix permissions helped against this how?
No, Linux is not immune to viruses. And as long as buffer overflows and the like continued to be treated as minor oversights and not like the major threats that they are (even if the program is only running with user-level permissions), Linux will be vulnerable. Once it becomes popular it will likely become a target...
Until then don't sweat it. After all the fire hasn't burned the house down yet, and we are fireproof. Aren't we?
Regards, Ben
PS The time for a fix to become available is meaningless. What is the time for that fix to become incorporated on the average machine out there? Ri-ight.
Considering the large number of Linux users here, it is extremely unfair to post links to pages that cause pop-ups for a plug-in that is not available for Linux.
If the phrase "spaghetti code" bothers you, your typical spreadsheet is like pulling teeth. Gnumeric may support a million more sane languages, but if they want to ever get anyone to switch from Excel they need to provide Excel compatibility, and that means supporting VBA.
Certainly may places where VB variants are used, such as ASP, you can also use Perl.
Additionally with the appropriate modules Perl can drive things through OLE automation using the same APIs that VB uses.
But if what you want is a way to take a VB script and run it in Perl, I don't think so. Or to embed Perl inside of a VB application? That could also be hard. (ActiveState sells tools to make dlls and com servers out of Perl, allowing it to be called from within VB. Again I doubt that is what you want.) Sorry...
Scroll down to the bottom. Apparently under the guise of Excel compatibility this spawn of Microsoft (Bill Gates got started with BASIC, wants everyone to use it) will soon infest Linux!
Actually, shudder as I might over the thought, it rationally is a pretty good idea. If anyone is interested the authors are Jody Goldberg and Michael Meeks. The mailing list is gb@helixcode.com.
Frustrating for the legitimate cowards, but it could work...
Another idea is to make anonymous cowards even less visible than they are - but let registered people "sign" cowards posts and take responsibility for the content.
The idea of a UPS is that when your power goes down (a rare event) your computer stays up. (Or goes down gracefully if that is not possible.)
The fuel cell technology would mean that you need to replace the fuel after x uses, but you could also have a much longer uptime. That trade-off could well be worth it.
The chip may be going at 700 MHz, but it is working in an emulated instruction set. So what speed CPU is that equivalent to in a best case, worst case, and some sort of average case?
One type of company rising to prominence is the "Application Service Provider". Now suppose that I am an application service provider and I want to enjoy the benefits of open source. So I GPL a bunch of my software, my competitor takes it, modifies it, and then I find out that I have no right to ask for the modifications back! This means that I put myself out on a limb but did not get the protection that I hoped to get from the GPL.
You glossed over this issue with a guestbook application. Something inherently trivial and unimportant. Now suppose that the application was an order processing application? Or something like Open Sales? (The latter is a very realistic example since it is under a GPL BTW.)
These are non-trivial but fundamentally oriented towards use in an environment where redistribution of the software does not matter so much as getting others to use your server...
Suppose that I take a GPLed program, and modify it to be very useful in a server that subsequently becomes very widely used. Even though lots of people are using the program, I am not distributing it, and nobody else has a right to my changes.
For some programs this hole does not matter. For others it could matter a lot. (Consider code whose entire purpose is to manage a complex website.)
I know that Bruce Perens had some thoughts at one point about using rules on public performances to come up with a free license that closed this loophole. I don't know what those thoughts are exactly though, or what came of them.
He says that, "That would be a first time in science that a theory can't be reduced."
Depending what you mean, this is either a trivial claim that is utterly meaningless, or else it is a strong claim which is complete BS.
If his claim is that no behaviour is seen at the higher level which is not in principle explainable from what happens at the lower level, then the claim is true and he misunderstand the concept of "emergent phenomena".
If his claim is that no behaviour is seen at the higher level whose explanations involve principles specific to the higher level, then he is wrong. Plenty of emergent phenomena occur all of the time at all sorts of levels. For instance the Jet Stream is unstable, it spontaneously develops "waves" north and south. (The length of the wave is about twice the width of North America. This is why warm weather on the East Coast of NA is accompanied by cold weather on the West and vica versa.)
In principle from a lower level you can run simulations and every time you will see this feature develop. Why does it develop? You won't have a clue unless you step back from the problem and apply higher level principles.
(I could give other examples ad nauseum, but emergent phenomena are not new things.)
Slashdot Mirror
The GNU copyleft license uses copyright to a purpose diametrically opposed to the original intent of copyright law. Hence the nickname. But it still uses the fact that the author has copyright to do its magic to guarantee that others cannot misuse (ie make proprietary) the freely released code.
So yes, his words are copyrighted by Richard Stallman. But what would he do with that copyright? Why make sure that nobody used his words in a way he disapproved of!
Not strange at all.
Cheers,
Ben
The entertainment issue has an attitude towards approaching marketing and legal issues with overwhelming force. However the MPAA is not the first marketing machine that Linux has taken on. Think, for instance, of the Microsoft juggernaught. Yet Linux advocates took that on, and have done a lot more than just leave a dent.
So every time you see an article like this, take the time out to write a polite and informative letter of explanation to the reporter and to the editors of the paper. The key is to be polite and informative.
And remember this. It takes a stroke of inspired idiocy to position yourself in the teeth of a movement like Linux. To start your lawsuits with Chris DiBona, a central figure in the most successful IPO in history. To attempt to, as the Fool put it, sue the entire Internet. Sure, the MPAA machine can be frightening. But that does not mean that they have not bitten off a lot more than they can chew...
Regards,
Ben
The fact is that while a lot of people installed 2.2.0, it was much closer to a trial candidate than a gold release. Even after 2.2.x was released it was some time before an official distribution would be based on it, Linus knew that, and so in no way could that version be considered one that (like Win2K) the end consumer would be expected to buy.
These bugs are in the version that Microsoft expected people to pay money for.
Besides which, the bug in question was, "Crash Linux". It wasn't a remotely exploitable hole, you needed to already have access to the box to (ab)use it.
Regards,
Ben
If someone has less, you rip them off for less.
That makes it make sense?
Incidentally the people who engage in import-export to try to smooth out said prices are called the "grey market". Which is legal but under the table.
Cheers,
Ben
You need to read more carefully. As the Fool said, there have been tools since 1997 that just grab the decrypted signals going to the video card and save that.
Really, you don't need to understand CSS to copy CSS encrypted stuff. It is needed if you want to make players without paying licensing fees. And that is what this case is about.
Cheers,
Ben
Case of a $#!@$#! firewall.
I just wanted to be sure that they saw it. (They did.) According to the response I got it is in a queue and should get tested today or tomorrow.
Cheers,
Ben
Here is the letter that I sent to do my part...
/g; # Stupid fix for long lines
/g;
/g;
What does this do?
1. I fixed the bug which meant that if you typed , previewed, then posted your post did not match your preview. (I needed to add a new stripByMode mode for this.)
2. I fixed the bug that made exttrans the same as plaintext.
3. I added a nice feature that allows people to indent lines just by indenting their submitted text. (eg If people try to paste Python code, it will now display.)
4. I made a minor modification to make the displayed comments a little easier for humans to read.
5. I modified your "Reduce the count of multiple lines" to not just reduce them by 2/3, but to actually keep them to a max of 2. I made them substantially harder to fool.
All in all little stuff that had been bugging me for a looong time...
My stupid email may cause these diffs to wrap. Make the obvious fix by hand if it does...
First the diff to public_html/comments.pl
$ diff -u comments.pl.00.01.26 comments.pl
--- comments.pl.00.01.26 Fri Jan 21 10:42:01 2000
+++ comments.pl Wed Jan 26 14:34:10 2000
@@ -219,7 +219,7 @@
"</td></tr>\n";
print "<tr><td align=right valign=top>Comment</td>";
print "<td><textarea wrap=virtual name=postercomment rows=10 cols=50>";
- print $$F{postercomment};
+ print &stripByMode($$F{postercomment}, "literal");
print "</textarea><BR>(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!
Don't forget the http://!)</td></tr>\n";
print "<tr><td> </TD><TD>\n";
Now to Slash.pm
$ diff -u Slash.pm.00.01.26 Slash.pm
--- Slash.pm.00.01.26 Wed Jan 26 13:18:55 2000
+++ Slash.pm Wed Jan 26 14:54:28 2000
@@ -1175,14 +1175,20 @@
my $str = shift;
my $fmode = shift || "nohtml";
- $str=stripBadHtml($str);
- if($fmode eq "plaintext" || $fmode eq "exttrans") {
- $str=~s/[\n]/<br>/gi; # pp breaks
- $str=~s/\<br\>\<br\><br\>/<br><br>/gi;
- } elsif($fmode eq "exttrans") {
+ $str =~ s/(\S{90})/$1
+ if ($fmode eq "exttrans" or $fmode eq "literal") {
+ # Encode all HTML tags
$str=~s/\&/&/g;
$str=~s/\</</g;
$str=~s/\>/>/g;
+ }
+ if($fmode eq "plaintext" or $fmode eq "exttrans") {
+ $str=stripBadHtml($str);
+ $str=~s/[\n]/<br>\n/gi; # pp breaks
+ $str=~s/(?:\<br\>\s*){2,}\<br\>/<br><br>/gi;
+ # Preserve leading indents
+ $str =~ s/\t/
+ $str =~ s/\<br\>\n?( +)/"<br>\n" . (" " x length($1))/eg;
} elsif($fmode eq "nohtml") {
$str=~s/\<(.*?)\>//g;
}
@@ -1195,7 +1201,6 @@
{
my $str = shift;
- $str =~ s/(\S{90})/$1
$str =~ s/<(?!.*?>)//gs;
$str =~ s/<(.*?)>/approveTag($1)/sge;
Cheers,
Ben
The for loop is explicitly sequential. The notation is not. If dealing with operations with potential side-effects this notation actually contains a promise that you don't have to worry about side-effects - which allows the compiler to generate more parallel code. This in turn can be optimized to be done with vector operations, or (in a different problem domain) across chips.
In other words the for loop is a barrier to optimization since in order to observe certain classes of optimizations the compiler has to figure out your code (and verify - for instance - whether the value of i has to wind up being calculated.)
Cheers,
Ben
I have been married for just shy of a decade and I have to tell you that you are wrong. Sure, if you buy into a set of social roles and just live that - well people aren't cardboard cut-outs. But if you realize that and work to keep a relationship alive - well I know people who are going strong for a lot longer than I have been married!
Of coure you only get out what you put in...
Cheers,
Ben
My understanding is that their Lisp implementation has enough security built in to avoid the problem...
:-)
Cheers,
Ben
Remember Melissa? It didn't do anything other than make a private note that it had visited and send emails. Think that Unix permissions help against something like this?
Most people keep a lot of important data writable by themselves in their home directory. Sure, "nothing important" may have been deleted, but you could still lose all of your files.
Recall the Internet Worm? This came up before. There was nothing special about it, it just was a worm that could spread itself without any human action. That made its generation time a fraction of a second (as opposed to the 15-minutes to an hour for Melissa), which resulted in its almost instantaneous spread to every machine it could infect. Unix permissions helped against this how?
No, Linux is not immune to viruses. And as long as buffer overflows and the like continued to be treated as minor oversights and not like the major threats that they are (even if the program is only running with user-level permissions), Linux will be vulnerable. Once it becomes popular it will likely become a target...
Until then don't sweat it. After all the fire hasn't burned the house down yet, and we are fireproof. Aren't we?
Regards,
Ben
PS The time for a fix to become available is meaningless. What is the time for that fix to become incorporated on the average machine out there? Ri-ight.
Considering the large number of Linux users here, it is extremely unfair to post links to pages that cause pop-ups for a plug-in that is not available for Linux.
Thanks,
Ben
If the phrase "spaghetti code" bothers you, your typical spreadsheet is like pulling teeth. Gnumeric may support a million more sane languages, but if they want to ever get anyone to switch from Excel they need to provide Excel compatibility, and that means supporting VBA.
Cheers,
Ben
I am not sure what you mean.
Certainly may places where VB variants are used, such as ASP, you can also use Perl.
Additionally with the appropriate modules Perl can drive things through OLE automation using the same APIs that VB uses.
But if what you want is a way to take a VB script and run it in Perl, I don't think so. Or to embed Perl inside of a VB application? That could also be hard. (ActiveState sells tools to make dlls and com servers out of Perl, allowing it to be called from within VB. Again I doubt that is what you want.) Sorry...
Ben
Scroll down to the bottom. Apparently under the guise of Excel compatibility this spawn of Microsoft (Bill Gates got started with BASIC, wants everyone to use it) will soon infest Linux!
Actually, shudder as I might over the thought, it rationally is a pretty good idea. If anyone is interested the authors are Jody Goldberg and Michael Meeks. The mailing list is gb@helixcode.com.
Cheers,
Ben
That could work.
Frustrating for the legitimate cowards, but it could work...
Another idea is to make anonymous cowards even less visible than they are - but let registered people "sign" cowards posts and take responsibility for the content.
Cheers,
Ben
You were thinking of the, "Head up ass" reward?
:-P
Cheers,
Ben
The idea of a UPS is that when your power goes down (a rare event) your computer stays up. (Or goes down gracefully if that is not possible.)
The fuel cell technology would mean that you need to replace the fuel after x uses, but you could also have a much longer uptime. That trade-off could well be worth it.
Regards,
Ben
Yes, there will be faster chips, but not with the battery. There is also room in rackmountable stuff.
Plus I am looking forward to high-end SMP laptops. Here the power savings is not as important as speed. (Think demos.)
No, Transmeta does have some good opportunities if they can execute well.
Cheers,
Ben
The chip may be going at 700 MHz, but it is working in an emulated instruction set. So what speed CPU is that equivalent to in a best case, worst case, and some sort of average case?
Ben
Too bad Mindcraft wasn't an option for the FUD though. I nominated them, would have voted for them...
Compared to their benchmarks, every other piece of FUD was second rate IMO.
Cheers,
Ben
One type of company rising to prominence is the "Application Service Provider". Now suppose that I am an application service provider and I want to enjoy the benefits of open source. So I GPL a bunch of my software, my competitor takes it, modifies it, and then I find out that I have no right to ask for the modifications back! This means that I put myself out on a limb but did not get the protection that I hoped to get from the GPL.
You glossed over this issue with a guestbook application. Something inherently trivial and unimportant. Now suppose that the application was an order processing application? Or something like Open Sales? (The latter is a very realistic example since it is under a GPL BTW.)
These are non-trivial but fundamentally oriented towards use in an environment where redistribution of the software does not matter so much as getting others to use your server...
Cheers,
Ben
What counts as distribution?
Suppose that I take a GPLed program, and modify it to be very useful in a server that subsequently becomes very widely used. Even though lots of people are using the program, I am not distributing it, and nobody else has a right to my changes.
For some programs this hole does not matter. For others it could matter a lot. (Consider code whose entire purpose is to manage a complex website.)
I know that Bruce Perens had some thoughts at one point about using rules on public performances to come up with a free license that closed this loophole. I don't know what those thoughts are exactly though, or what came of them.
Cheers,
Ben
He says that, "That would be a first time in science that a theory can't be reduced."
Depending what you mean, this is either a trivial claim that is utterly meaningless, or else it is a strong claim which is complete BS.
If his claim is that no behaviour is seen at the higher level which is not in principle explainable from what happens at the lower level, then the claim is true and he misunderstand the concept of "emergent phenomena".
If his claim is that no behaviour is seen at the higher level whose explanations involve principles specific to the higher level, then he is wrong. Plenty of emergent phenomena occur all of the time at all sorts of levels. For instance the Jet Stream is unstable, it spontaneously develops "waves" north and south. (The length of the wave is about twice the width of North America. This is why warm weather on the East Coast of NA is accompanied by cold weather on the West and vica versa.)
In principle from a lower level you can run simulations and every time you will see this feature develop. Why does it develop? You won't have a clue unless you step back from the problem and apply higher level principles.
(I could give other examples ad nauseum, but emergent phenomena are not new things.)
Cheers,
Ben
Read more closely. They allow you to post the source-code. The binaries appear to be another kettle of fish...
Take a look at a longer description that I got from Frank Hecker in email.
Cheers,
Ben