Well, that's two corrections so far, mea culpa it seems... the cards we manufactured had the MAC in NVRAM, I suppose someone could have changed it, but I didn't think the OS ops actually did so for any cards. Mea culpa, eh, sorry about ass-u-me-ing something.
The MAC is 48 bits, split in two, don't remember how many bits each part. One part is the manufacturer id, the other is the specific card, such as a sequential serial number. MACs are assigned when built, non-changeable, a truly unique card id.
However, you can tell the OS to report a different MAC. That's what "changing your MAC" means, it doesn't actually change the MAC on the card, but it changes what the OS reports.
This is also a good example of why Palladium and trusted computing can't have just any old OS running on a computer. DRM requires complete control, not just a little bit of special software.
The music industry considers fair use to be theft. See, for instance, the dialogue between Hilary Rosen and Orrin Hatch, where she told him that it should be illegal to copy a CD he bought for his car or for his wife.
Suppose a new Apache version starts up differently, so the previous policy no longer matches. Perhaps Apache won't change that much, but there are certainly some apps which would need more complicated policies than Apache; what if they read config files in a different order, or add some new wrinkle? What about Perl or Python programs, where some module changes, or Perl itself changes?
It would seem to me (as naive as I am to this new concept) that this could be a major pain in the butt. How much does this apply in practice?
I've worked with plenty of H1Bs, and some are good, some are bad. But that doesn't matter. Most management sees employees as replaceable parts, no difference from one to the next. They literally don't know how to measure the worth of an employee other than useless buzzwords or seniority. Thus when they see an H1B with the right buzzwords but at half the cost of a citizen, they salivate at saving money. The predictable result is that more H1Bs are hired, and since no attempt has been made to hire only the good ones, a lot of crap H1Bs are hired.
Thus the resentment by actual citizens trying to get the same job. Whether you fit the crap lable or not has nothing to do with complaints about H1Bs. You are tarnished by the management incompetency brush.
or they can't pull. Coefficient of friction between steel tires and steel rail is abysnally small, that's why they are so efficient, but also why they can't climb steep grades, and why the loco needs all that weight. Other cars could benefit from less weight, but not the loco. not the driving wheels at least.
I support RMS in many ways, he's the driving force which got us most of the free software we use today, indirectly or directly. But he fails to understand that freedom doesn't come all at once.
Think of trying to implement democracy in Iraq after Saddam's fall, or even better, in some far more impoverished nation with much less technology. You can't just put up voting booths and say you have a democracy. Democracy requires an informed citizenry, it requires literacy, it requires a stable social climate, it requires reasonable expectations of the citizens that their vote might matter, and it requires them to have their immediate concerns taken care of, like stable income and work, safe from government persecution, safe from crime.
Same with free software. I think BitKeeper's license sucks in many ways, but perfection is the enemy of good enough, and right now, BitKeeper's license is good enough for the kernel folks, so RMS should just butt out, work on an alternative if he wants, but butt out of something that is none of his business.
DRM cannot be implemented piecemeal, no security system can. Imagine a military base that has security gates and open gates, all leading onto the same base. Or a server with some secure ports, some insecure. No good! It's all or none.
For you and others, let me repeat that: Every component has to be DRM enabled, fulltime, or the system is insecure.
This eliminates your point 2, that medical equipment uses 486s, Dragonballs, etc. The OS is unimportant; the chip is unimportant. Each component has to enforce DRM or there's a security hole. It's all or none. This is another reason to dislike DRM, it forbids Linux and all other source-available OSs, in fact, it restricts what software you can run. But back to your point 2, ARM is used in PDAs, so it has to support DRM. Every component that can connect to other components has to be DRM enabled. Every component has to reject connections to non-DRM-enabled components. The medical system would have to be isolated from the rest of the world. So much for downloading new versions of software easily.
As for point 1, the military is moving to COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components precisely because the pure military market is so small. Imagine the per-unit cost of buying a thousand processors of a couple of hundred airplanes, when the development cost is just as high as a commercial processor. You thought $600 hammers were bad! Ha!
I've been programming since 1968, and very little had anything to do with math. People give me the same line, wow, I'm no good with math, I couldn't program, and don't believe me when I say computers add and subtract, multiply once in a while (array subscripting usually), and hardly ever divide.
Scientific or engineering programming, they need the math because they are math programming. The rest, forget it, maybe you add some numbers for a shopping cart, multiply for sales tax, but programming has little use for math.
I learned long ago that when an 8 bitter needs trig functions, you use a look up table generated externally.
Haynes books have been banned because too many people were deluded into thinking they understoods mechanics' lingo, Home Depot has been shut down to avoid furthering the delusions of millions of do-it-yourselfers, The Motley Fool has been served with cease and desist papers, O'Reilly, Wrox, and many many other publishers have been hit with restraining orders, can millions of cat and dog owners have been served with restraining orders prohibiting them from coming closer than 100 yards to pet stores.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law.
I certainly agree with the sentiment expressed by Heinlein, and by sconeu, but how is this relevant? Heinlein wasn't a lawyer, he wrote fiction. Great quote for how you'd like the universe run, but relevant? Don't think so. Get a quote froma real lawyer.
Microsoft designed an expensive box. PS2 and GameCube were designed better. Economics, as you put it, would dictate that Microsoft start a new design and beat the competition.
Detroit designed expensive to build cars and Japan beat them. Would you think it proper for Detroit to have shut down the Japanese car makers?
Are the Chinese going to release their mods to the GPLd code when they distribute their version of Linux? Is there anything anybody over here can do about it if they don't? In particular, will the US government, usually real quick to condemn IP violations and theft when there's money involved, lean on the Chinese government to obey the GPL?
It would be interesting to figure out the CPU details from the code they release...
Big companies and greedy SOBs trying to be big have wanted this patent nonsense; maybe they will regret getting what they asked for. Maybe, just maybe, when enough of these ridiculous patent fights take up so much of their time and resources, really innovative people will be able to get on with their lives, and common sense will be restored. Maybe. Someday.
An electronic tech in the military learns to swap cards. A hull tech may learn to weld.
Join the military if you want an adventure, secondarily if you want to save for college. Do not join for the fantastic education. Think abbout it -- they want bodies and field maintenace, not wizards.
I never understood why the Navy dropped its slogan "It's not just a job, it's an adventure." If you want the college education fund from the GI bill and don't want an adventure, join the air force or army.
If you want that adventure, join the navy, go overseas. Talk to the recruiter, make him understand that you want two years in the Pacific and two years in the Med. On a ship. The rating only matters if it guarantees you four years on a ship. You will go places and see countries you will never get a chance to repeat, all on Uncle Sam's (that's us taxpayers) dime. I won't begrudge you using my tax money for your adventure in the slightest.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's two corrections so far, mea culpa it seems ... the cards we manufactured had the MAC in NVRAM, I suppose someone could have changed it, but I didn't think the OS ops actually did so for any cards. Mea culpa, eh, sorry about ass-u-me-ing something.
The MAC is 48 bits, split in two, don't remember how many bits each part. One part is the manufacturer id, the other is the specific card, such as a sequential serial number. MACs are assigned when built, non-changeable, a truly unique card id.
However, you can tell the OS to report a different MAC. That's what "changing your MAC" means, it doesn't actually change the MAC on the card, but it changes what the OS reports.
This is also a good example of why Palladium and trusted computing can't have just any old OS running on a computer. DRM requires complete control, not just a little bit of special software.
so pick Linux, does any OS have more choices (JFS, XFS, ext3, Reiser) ?
The music industry considers fair use to be theft. See, for instance, the dialogue between Hilary Rosen and Orrin Hatch, where she told him that it should be illegal to copy a CD he bought for his car or for his wife.
... they're called commericals
Should be:
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Suppose a new Apache version starts up differently, so the previous policy no longer matches. Perhaps Apache won't change that much, but there are certainly some apps which would need more complicated policies than Apache; what if they read config files in a different order, or add some new wrinkle? What about Perl or Python programs, where some module changes, or Perl itself changes?
It would seem to me (as naive as I am to this new concept) that this could be a major pain in the butt. How much does this apply in practice?
I've worked with plenty of H1Bs, and some are good, some are bad. But that doesn't matter. Most management sees employees as replaceable parts, no difference from one to the next. They literally don't know how to measure the worth of an employee other than useless buzzwords or seniority. Thus when they see an H1B with the right buzzwords but at half the cost of a citizen, they salivate at saving money. The predictable result is that more H1Bs are hired, and since no attempt has been made to hire only the good ones, a lot of crap H1Bs are hired.
Thus the resentment by actual citizens trying to get the same job. Whether you fit the crap lable or not has nothing to do with complaints about H1Bs. You are tarnished by the management incompetency brush.
or they can't pull. Coefficient of friction between steel tires and steel rail is abysnally small, that's why they are so efficient, but also why they can't climb steep grades, and why the loco needs all that weight. Other cars could benefit from less weight, but not the loco. not the driving wheels at least.
When Ford gives away cars FOR FREE, do you not think they might want to only give them to non-competitors?
I support RMS in many ways, he's the driving force which got us most of the free software we use today, indirectly or directly. But he fails to understand that freedom doesn't come all at once.
Think of trying to implement democracy in Iraq after Saddam's fall, or even better, in some far more impoverished nation with much less technology. You can't just put up voting booths and say you have a democracy. Democracy requires an informed citizenry, it requires literacy, it requires a stable social climate, it requires reasonable expectations of the citizens that their vote might matter, and it requires them to have their immediate concerns taken care of, like stable income and work, safe from government persecution, safe from crime.
Same with free software. I think BitKeeper's license sucks in many ways, but perfection is the enemy of good enough, and right now, BitKeeper's license is good enough for the kernel folks, so RMS should just butt out, work on an alternative if he wants, but butt out of something that is none of his business.
... and you'd have a professional public relations firm!
(to mindless twits who don't get it: read his sig)
...right?
Zeroeth post!
DRM cannot be implemented piecemeal, no security system can. Imagine a military base that has security gates and open gates, all leading onto the same base. Or a server with some secure ports, some insecure. No good! It's all or none.
For you and others, let me repeat that: Every component has to be DRM enabled, fulltime, or the system is insecure.
This eliminates your point 2, that medical equipment uses 486s, Dragonballs, etc. The OS is unimportant; the chip is unimportant. Each component has to enforce DRM or there's a security hole. It's all or none. This is another reason to dislike DRM, it forbids Linux and all other source-available OSs, in fact, it restricts what software you can run. But back to your point 2, ARM is used in PDAs, so it has to support DRM. Every component that can connect to other components has to be DRM enabled. Every component has to reject connections to non-DRM-enabled components. The medical system would have to be isolated from the rest of the world. So much for downloading new versions of software easily.
As for point 1, the military is moving to COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components precisely because the pure military market is so small. Imagine the per-unit cost of buying a thousand processors of a couple of hundred airplanes, when the development cost is just as high as a commercial processor. You thought $600 hammers were bad! Ha!
I've been programming since 1968, and very little had anything to do with math. People give me the same line, wow, I'm no good with math, I couldn't program, and don't believe me when I say computers add and subtract, multiply once in a while (array subscripting usually), and hardly ever divide.
Scientific or engineering programming, they need the math because they are math programming. The rest, forget it, maybe you add some numbers for a shopping cart, multiply for sales tax, but programming has little use for math.
I learned long ago that when an 8 bitter needs trig functions, you use a look up table generated externally.
Haynes books have been banned because too many people were deluded into thinking they understoods mechanics' lingo, Home Depot has been shut down to avoid furthering the delusions of millions of do-it-yourselfers, The Motley Fool has been served with cease and desist papers, O'Reilly, Wrox, and many many other publishers have been hit with restraining orders, can millions of cat and dog owners have been served with restraining orders prohibiting them from coming closer than 100 yards to pet stores.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law.
I certainly agree with the sentiment expressed by Heinlein, and by sconeu, but how is this relevant? Heinlein wasn't a lawyer, he wrote fiction. Great quote for how you'd like the universe run, but relevant? Don't think so. Get a quote froma real lawyer.
Microsoft designed an expensive box. PS2 and GameCube were designed better. Economics, as you put it, would dictate that Microsoft start a new design and beat the competition.
Detroit designed expensive to build cars and Japan beat them. Would you think it proper for Detroit to have shut down the Japanese car makers?
Free car?
Food ain't free, housing ain't free, why should entertainment be free?
Now what do I do?
Get an education, that's what you're there for.
Ah, survival is an excellent teacher ...
Are the Chinese going to release their mods to the GPLd code when they distribute their version of Linux? Is there anything anybody over here can do about it if they don't? In particular, will the US government, usually real quick to condemn IP violations and theft when there's money involved, lean on the Chinese government to obey the GPL?
It would be interesting to figure out the CPU details from the code they release...
Big companies and greedy SOBs trying to be big have wanted this patent nonsense; maybe they will regret getting what they asked for. Maybe, just maybe, when enough of these ridiculous patent fights take up so much of their time and resources, really innovative people will be able to get on with their lives, and common sense will be restored. Maybe. Someday.
Ginger! Not Mary Ann!
An electronic tech in the military learns to swap cards. A hull tech may learn to weld.
Join the military if you want an adventure, secondarily if you want to save for college. Do not join for the fantastic education. Think abbout it -- they want bodies and field maintenace, not wizards.
I never understood why the Navy dropped its slogan "It's not just a job, it's an adventure." If you want the college education fund from the GI bill and don't want an adventure, join the air force or army.
If you want that adventure, join the navy, go overseas. Talk to the recruiter, make him understand that you want two years in the Pacific and two years in the Med. On a ship. The rating only matters if it guarantees you four years on a ship. You will go places and see countries you will never get a chance to repeat, all on Uncle Sam's (that's us taxpayers) dime. I won't begrudge you using my tax money for your adventure in the slightest.