They are talking about consumers of the net, those who consume and that's all. Not the producers. Unswell those heads, folks. Assuming there's any validity to the idea of a net set replacing the jet set, it's stil just parasites vs producers.
Well that is interesting, and sure puts a different light on things. This whole reportage is full of beans then. Everything I've read, mainstream and elsewise, imples or explicitly says that M$ was writing to the open spec. I stand corrected. M$ has no business reverse engineering a non-open spec when an open spec should have been good enough. M$ is worse than a hypocrit.
The only reason this unpublished protocol exists is because AOL got pissed that someone took them at their word and used their published protocol. Is that not so?
What's the point of publishing a so-calld open protocol if you change it the minute someone uses it?
The only "non-published" spec M$ is using is the one AOL made up internally that doesn't follow the published spec. IE, as I understand it, they published a spec for the world to use, M$ did, so they changed the spec internally without publishing the changes, and M$ reverse engineeed teh deviation from the open spec.
If this is not correct, please explain. I DON'T like M$, they can rot in hell, but I don't see how they did anything other than what AOL wanted for free, other than being bigger and meaner.
Remember, AOL published specs, they wanted other people to write clients. So M$ wrote a client. What else did AOL expect?
Let me phrase that differently. If AOL opened the spec so, for instance, Linux could have an AIM client, why should M$ not also write a client?
Or let's try a third way. AOL wanted other people to write programs for AOL, without getting paid by AOL. AOL wanted a free ride in exchange for a free ride. M$ took them up on that offer. What is wrong with that?
Use the middle button to open the link in a new window. Then hit ESC or the stop light if necessary, and see if it's obvious what is wrong with the link. In this case, it's just an extraneous quote at the end. Backspace oer it, hit ENTER, and away you o.
I also use this for some of the freshmeat links, where either there has been a new release and the "old" one from freshmeat is invalid, or where the freshmeat si simply "lastest-xyz.tar.gz" and I want to know the version number of the download, not just latest.
Five committees have passed versions of this bill. The Rules Committee decides which one to send to the entire House, and they are friendly(er) towards the bill. It almost certainly won't be the fascist inspired version from the Armed Services committee.
10 or 15 years ago, there was a company trying to break the city chartered cable monopolies. They wanted to bury their own cable and claimed they could make money doing so. The existing chartered cable monopolies screamed bloody murder. A pox on cable companies. They complained when someone tried to show they weren't a natural monopoly, and now they're screaming for a new monopoly. I especially detest AT&T. They intentionally got themselves regulated 80 years ago to ward off lawsuits over all their smelly business practices, they got split up and were absolutely inept at all normal business practices, and now they are buying into a new monopoly and want government protection. I say the hell with them. Maybe it's time for some new baby bells.
Bundling access with the ISP is unnecessary. Breaking that in two has nothing in common with the "regulation" you decry. Keeping the two bundled would be exactly the same as requiring your 56K modem ISP or your DSL ISP to be the local phone company.
Unbundling them wouldn't cost the cable company a dime. No one has ever said they should provide free access, only that they shouldn't charge the same price for bundled access and unbundled access. The cable companies screams that they can't afford to deploy cable modems if they don't reap the rewards are completely bogus -- they simply shift the ISP portion of their costs from your cable bill and to the ISP.
Please be more precise when you complain of regulation. You sound like the kind who thinks stop signs and signal lights are too much regulation.
All new technology has early adopters. All new tech companies target the rich with time to spare. It has always been so.
"Studies" like this always annoy me, with their attitude of early adopters being to blame for not sharing. Or some such rot.
10, 20 years ago it was undoubtedly even more weighted towards the rich and powerful. Things even out. What with "free" PCs and $200 PCs now, it won't be long before PCs are as common as TVs. Then the dogoodies will whine about the next fancy hi tech toys.
I quote: RDist has been and continues to be freely distributable with free versions of UNIX such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, as well as with all Linux distributions whether the distributions are free or not.
Almost all programs produce output which came from the code itself. Compilers -- all that output comes from within, not from the source they process. There's an html mode for emacs -- it adds a section all form within itself. Gnuplot - outpust lots of stuff which didn't come from the data files.
I've got a program which reports temp probe readings to the screen. The digits are fabricated from external data, but the decimal and the F/C are hard coded within the program.
I find it hard to believe anyone would consider those outputs GPL'd.
On a personal level, one can always vote _before_ heading to the mandatory voting party. If your vote is already cast, any further attempt to cast a (socially coerced) vote will fail
The social fallout from you voting in secret will be worse than if you had been open about voting a non-endorsed way. You would have been told of tehvoting party well in advance. You will be castigated as having something to hide. This is seriously bad joojoo.
It comes down to people needing backbone. All the laws in the world can't get prop up the spineless.
I believe from previous reports that both these units use Linux as their core. I expect they have some custom kernel modules, and their remote control response and TV-menu software is certainly proprietary, but all of that can be easily duplicated by us mere mortals. No doubt early open source versions won't be as smooth; in particular, the buffering will be tricky, favoring machines with lots of memory, and you won't want crontab firing off periodically, and you won't want large compiles in the foreground.
Their real added value is the phone connection. But this only obviates the need to scan the schedule ahead of time, and most people are used to doing that now with VCRs. So for the initial open source versions and early adaptors at least, this is not an obstacle.
Seems to me that there will be open source TV recorders within a year or two at most.
I meant 1% of 5-10 %, or one out of a thousand or two thousand.
That still being good etc, you have to compare it to tripling your burnin costs. How much is that one in a thousand worth? Suppose it costs $10 to burnin, or $50 (I don't know). That means the cost has now gone to $30, or $150, on every system, to save one in a thousand from being shipped back. Might it not be better to save the $30,000 or $150,000 and simply FedEx a replacement?
A serving B is faster than B serving A. OK, but each has handled the same number of bytes, total Tx + Rx. Is A->B faster because A sends faster or because B receives faster?
Change one variable at a time, then try it. Or try all four combinations.
It's not idealism, or the idea that only Open Source Software doesn't suck. It's because with proprietary software, if you buy a new machine, it's most likely illegal to copy your software. Did you know that the new UCITA proposal makes it illegal for two merged companies to continue using their already purchased software? Yessirree bob it's true. It says that the machines have to be wiped clean and everything re-installed with newly purcahased software. The licenses to the old software cannot be transferred.
If I upgrade my OS, chances are the old software won't work. DLL hell anybody?
Or buy a different processor. With OSS, just recompile most of the time and you are ready to go.
I don't have to wirry about bugfixes also coming with unwanted upgrades, either. How many M$ upgrades come with IE, and won't work unless you install it?
That's why I don't like proprietary software. And M$ seems to lead the way in proprietary ugliness.
There is far more to the Unix community than just free BSDers. Liek I said in my other post, BSD has arrogant snobs, Linux has Anonymous Cowards. I think BSD got snobbish because they considered themsleves the last bastion of the One True Unix, and then along comes this upstart without proper breeding. Linux, of course, has its Anon Cows for just the same reason -- they are the rebels and don't have to pay attention to the Establishment.
I specifically want source that I control; I want to know that if I buy another box, upgrade the OS, whatever, I can install the programs I want just by compiling. I don't have to worry about DLL hell, licenses, limited time demos, etc.
That's what it all comes down to. I think RMS has done wonders, but sometimes is too idealistic about GNU/Linux. ERS has done wonders, but sometimes is too insistent that OSS provides better quality control. I simply want to OWN the software I have, and not be dependent on big fscked corporations setting restrictions withlicenses and closed proprietary software.
He characterizes Linux as non-BSD non-UNIX. Now it might be "historically" accurate to classify any BSD system as "UNIX", but I thought UNIX was a trademark of somebody, and an OS had to be certified before using that trademark. Have any of the free BSDs, or BSDI, been so certified? In general terms though, only quibblers would call Linux non-UNIX; seems to me like a chip on his shoulder.
In another annoying poke at Linux, he says BSD systems shine at this, with their ability to provide a usable email server for numerous users on a castoff 486 PC. Uh, pardon me, Linux too, excuse me. Chip on his shoulder again?
I'm also annoyed at the somewhat patronizing attitude that Linux is our most fertile recruiting ground, and When they move on to BSD, as if Linux is merely a step in the path to true enlightenment with BSD.
Well, well, not bad overall for a BSD fanatic. I suppose Linux has raving Anonymous Cowards, and BSD has patronizing snobs. Not sure which is worse. Wouldn't it be a nice world without both?
For what it's worth, I chose Linux because the development seemed more open, so to speak. Not so tightly controlled. Plus, there are 3 BSDs, and I often wonder how well BSD-specific code ports from one to the other. I imagine that if I settled on one of them, it wouldn't really matter much at all, but I want my system for exploration, not production, so it changes all the time, and I am not interested in monolithic upgrades. I expect I would be perfectly happy with the "UNIX-ness" of any them. But a choice had to be made, and I am not interested in remaking that decision for "just another UNIX system".
Slashdot Mirror
They are talking about consumers of the net, those who consume and that's all. Not the producers. Unswell those heads, folks. Assuming there's any validity to the idea of a net set replacing the jet set, it's stil just parasites vs producers.
--
Well that is interesting, and sure puts a different light on things. This whole reportage is full of beans then. Everything I've read, mainstream and elsewise, imples or explicitly says that M$ was writing to the open spec. I stand corrected. M$ has no business reverse engineering a non-open spec when an open spec should have been good enough. M$ is worse than a hypocrit.
Thanks VERY much for enlightening me.
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They did it themselves, voluntary, in the greedy (and perfectly normal) expectation of getting free clients written by others for their own purposes.
Once someone took them up on that offer, they whined and changed the supposedly open standard.
--
The only reason this unpublished protocol exists is because AOL got pissed that someone took them at their word and used their published protocol. Is that not so?
What's the point of publishing a so-calld open protocol if you change it the minute someone uses it?
--
The only "non-published" spec M$ is using is the one AOL made up internally that doesn't follow the published spec. IE, as I understand it, they published a spec for the world to use, M$ did, so they changed the spec internally without publishing the changes, and M$ reverse engineeed teh deviation from the open spec.
If this is not correct, please explain. I DON'T like M$, they can rot in hell, but I don't see how they did anything other than what AOL wanted for free, other than being bigger and meaner.
--
Remember, AOL published specs, they wanted other people to write clients. So M$ wrote a client. What else did AOL expect?
Let me phrase that differently. If AOL opened the spec so, for instance, Linux could have an AIM client, why should M$ not also write a client?
Or let's try a third way. AOL wanted other people to write programs for AOL, without getting paid by AOL. AOL wanted a free ride in exchange for a free ride. M$ took them up on that offer. What is wrong with that?
--
You are.
--
The original Emacs WAS written by RMS, as a set of macros for the TECO editor. Gosling came laong after and didn't have a true LISP, only "mock" lisp.
As for extirpating RMS's code from gcc, how much of Linus' original code do you think is still in the kernel?
Go back to your grade school classes.
--
Unless they key each set of goggles to a specific screen, which they can't :-)
A very silly screen.
--
Use the middle button to open the link in a new window. Then hit ESC or the stop light if necessary, and see if it's obvious what is wrong with the link. In this case, it's just an extraneous quote at the end. Backspace oer it, hit ENTER, and away you o.
I also use this for some of the freshmeat links, where either there has been a new release and the "old" one from freshmeat is invalid, or where the freshmeat si simply "lastest-xyz.tar.gz" and I want to know the version number of the download, not just latest.
--
Five committees have passed versions of this bill. The Rules Committee decides which one to send to the entire House, and they are friendly(er) towards the bill. It almost certainly won't be the fascist inspired version from the Armed Services committee.
--
10 or 15 years ago, there was a company trying to break the city chartered cable monopolies. They wanted to bury their own cable and claimed they could make money doing so. The existing chartered cable monopolies screamed bloody murder. A pox on cable companies. They complained when someone tried to show they weren't a natural monopoly, and now they're screaming for a new monopoly. I especially detest AT&T. They intentionally got themselves regulated 80 years ago to ward off lawsuits over all their smelly business practices, they got split up and were absolutely inept at all normal business practices, and now they are buying into a new monopoly and want government protection. I say the hell with them. Maybe it's time for some new baby bells.
--
Bundling access with the ISP is unnecessary. Breaking that in two has nothing in common with the "regulation" you decry. Keeping the two bundled would be exactly the same as requiring your 56K modem ISP or your DSL ISP to be the local phone company.
Unbundling them wouldn't cost the cable company a dime. No one has ever said they should provide free access, only that they shouldn't charge the same price for bundled access and unbundled access. The cable companies screams that they can't afford to deploy cable modems if they don't reap the rewards are completely bogus -- they simply shift the ISP portion of their costs from your cable bill and to the ISP.
Please be more precise when you complain of regulation. You sound like the kind who thinks stop signs and signal lights are too much regulation.
--
All new technology has early adopters. All new tech companies target the rich with time to spare. It has always been so.
"Studies" like this always annoy me, with their attitude of early adopters being to blame for not sharing. Or some such rot.
10, 20 years ago it was undoubtedly even more weighted towards the rich and powerful. Things even out. What with "free" PCs and $200 PCs now, it won't be long before PCs are as common as TVs. Then the dogoodies will whine about the next fancy hi tech toys.
--
I quote: RDist has been and continues to be freely distributable with free versions of UNIX such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, as well as with all Linux distributions whether the distributions are free or not.
Looks pretty good to me.
--
Almost all programs produce output which came from the code itself. Compilers -- all that output comes from within, not from the source they process. There's an html mode for emacs -- it adds a section all form within itself. Gnuplot - outpust lots of stuff which didn't come from the data files.
I've got a program which reports temp probe readings to the screen. The digits are fabricated from external data, but the decimal and the F/C are hard coded within the program.
I find it hard to believe anyone would consider those outputs GPL'd.
--
On a personal level, one can always vote _before_ heading to the mandatory voting party. If your vote is already cast, any further attempt to cast a (socially coerced) vote will fail
The social fallout from you voting in secret will be worse than if you had been open about voting a non-endorsed way. You would have been told of tehvoting party well in advance. You will be castigated as having something to hide. This is seriously bad joojoo.
It comes down to people needing backbone. All the laws in the world can't get prop up the spineless.
--
Photocopy your absentee ballot before sending it in.
Fill in your absentee ballot at church.
Same diff. Worse in that it's hardcopy.
Anonymous voting is wide open to fraud. How can anyone prove stuffing the box when no individual can prove their vote was changed?
Public voting is open to coercion.
Choose your poison.
You need to prevent anon voting fraud while eliminating coerced public voting.
Would zero knowledge proofs allow individual voters to see their vote was counted correctly without actually disclosing said vote?
--
I believe from previous reports that both these units use Linux as their core. I expect they have some custom kernel modules, and their remote control response and TV-menu software is certainly proprietary, but all of that can be easily duplicated by us mere mortals. No doubt early open source versions won't be as smooth; in particular, the buffering will be tricky, favoring machines with lots of memory, and you won't want crontab firing off periodically, and you won't want large compiles in the foreground.
Their real added value is the phone connection. But this only obviates the need to scan the schedule ahead of time, and most people are used to doing that now with VCRs. So for the initial open source versions and early adaptors at least, this is not an obstacle.
Seems to me that there will be open source TV recorders within a year or two at most.
--
I meant 1% of 5-10 %, or one out of a thousand or two thousand.
That still being good etc, you have to compare it to tripling your burnin costs. How much is that one in a thousand worth? Suppose it costs $10 to burnin, or $50 (I don't know). That means the cost has now gone to $30, or $150, on every system, to save one in a thousand from being shipped back. Might it not be better to save the $30,000 or $150,000 and simply FedEx a replacement?
It's their business decision.
--
A serving B is faster than B serving A. OK, but each has handled the same number of bytes, total Tx + Rx. Is A->B faster because A sends faster or because B receives faster?
Change one variable at a time, then try it. Or try all four combinations.
--
It's not idealism, or the idea that only Open Source Software doesn't suck. It's because with proprietary software, if you buy a new machine, it's most likely illegal to copy your software. Did you know that the new UCITA proposal makes it illegal for two merged companies to continue using their already purchased software? Yessirree bob it's true. It says that the machines have to be wiped clean and everything re-installed with newly purcahased software. The licenses to the old software cannot be transferred.
If I upgrade my OS, chances are the old software won't work. DLL hell anybody?
Or buy a different processor. With OSS, just recompile most of the time and you are ready to go.
I don't have to wirry about bugfixes also coming with unwanted upgrades, either. How many M$ upgrades come with IE, and won't work unless you install it?
That's why I don't like proprietary software. And M$ seems to lead the way in proprietary ugliness.
--
There is far more to the Unix community than just free BSDers. Liek I said in my other post, BSD has arrogant snobs, Linux has Anonymous Cowards. I think BSD got snobbish because they considered themsleves the last bastion of the One True Unix, and then along comes this upstart without proper breeding. Linux, of course, has its Anon Cows for just the same reason -- they are the rebels and don't have to pay attention to the Establishment.
--
I specifically want source that I control; I want to know that if I buy another box, upgrade the OS, whatever, I can install the programs I want just by compiling. I don't have to worry about DLL hell, licenses, limited time demos, etc.
That's what it all comes down to. I think RMS has done wonders, but sometimes is too idealistic about GNU/Linux. ERS has done wonders, but sometimes is too insistent that OSS provides better quality control. I simply want to OWN the software I have, and not be dependent on big fscked corporations setting restrictions withlicenses and closed proprietary software.
--
He characterizes Linux as non-BSD non-UNIX. Now it might be "historically" accurate to classify any BSD system as "UNIX", but I thought UNIX was a trademark of somebody, and an OS had to be certified before using that trademark. Have any of the free BSDs, or BSDI, been so certified? In general terms though, only quibblers would call Linux non-UNIX; seems to me like a chip on his shoulder.
In another annoying poke at Linux, he says BSD systems shine at this, with their ability to provide a usable email server for numerous users on a castoff 486 PC. Uh, pardon me, Linux too, excuse me. Chip on his shoulder again?
I'm also annoyed at the somewhat patronizing attitude that Linux is our most fertile recruiting ground, and When they move on to BSD, as if Linux is merely a step in the path to true enlightenment with BSD.
Well, well, not bad overall for a BSD fanatic. I suppose Linux has raving Anonymous Cowards, and BSD has patronizing snobs. Not sure which is worse. Wouldn't it be a nice world without both?
For what it's worth, I chose Linux because the development seemed more open, so to speak. Not so tightly controlled. Plus, there are 3 BSDs, and I often wonder how well BSD-specific code ports from one to the other. I imagine that if I settled on one of them, it wouldn't really matter much at all, but I want my system for exploration, not production, so it changes all the time, and I am not interested in monolithic upgrades. I expect I would be perfectly happy with the "UNIX-ness" of any them. But a choice had to be made, and I am not interested in remaking that decision for "just another UNIX system".
--