Why not? Slashdot the bloody legal system, raise cain in the courtroom. Do Flynn on them. Make strawman cases... in general... just overload the system to such an extend it can no longer function. Brought down by it's own excesses... I love it.:)
Sorry, but linux has not played a "big role" in the web by any stretch of the imagination. Solaris runs on far more systems than linux for webservers. Where is the praise of Sun?
the biggest thing Linux has done so far for the web is make web servers a commodity - run on cheap, commercial hardware, and do it well. That's a major accomplishment but it doesn't show in any of the server statistics.. yet.
Linux is more a social phenomenon than a technical one - most of what linux does other OS' do better - Windows is a better desktop, Solaris / FreeBSD is a better server, BeOS is more multimedia... Linux tries to do all things, but it has succeeded in doing nothing perfectly yet.
If you want to give linux credit - give it credit for the social phenomenon in the form of the open source / free software duality.
connection refused *reload* connection refused *reload* connection timed out *reload* 500 internal server error *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* DO YOU AGREE TO THE CONDITIONS FOUND HEREIN, blah blah blah blah, sell your soul, blah blah blah blah... Yes.
connection refused *reload* connection refused *reload* *reload* *reload* An e-mail is immediately being sent to l335h4x0rd00d@hotmail.com which you may use to access the compaq server(s) you have chosen at blah blah blah
I have to disagree with the "rules" part. Drawing on both my own personal experience and Appendix B of the Hacker Dictionary, geeks are generally anti-authoritarian. They don't follow rules because they're there - they follow them because they have a good reason to follow (which is not that somebody might punish you for disobeying it!).
The RIAA has some "laws" regarding music distribution. Know any geeks that follow them?
The federal government has "laws" about software copying, see many geeks following those laws?
The RFC system, quoted in your own dialog, is often overridden by technical necessity - the FIN_WAIT2 state, for example, has no timeout (look up SO_LINGER in your sockets book for a more detailed analysis). Solution - put one in and violate the standard. Many such "rules" have been bent, some of them outright broken. Witness Richard Stallman's recent POSIX_ME_HARDER post...
In short, I reaffirm my belief that geeks do not subscribe to any specific political beliefs. The only ideals I've found common amongst geeks is the so-called "hacker ethic".
E-commerce DOES exist. It is not an IBM marketing phrase. Believe this. If in doubt, check out "datamation" or whatever magazine is sitting on your boss' desk right now.
Patent everything.
Aquire huge amounts of lawyers and money. Guns are frowned on - use them only internationally.
Your trademark must consist of an easy to remember name - preferably one in the dictionary. Prefix the word with one of the following letters: "X, e, i". Example: eXtreme Computer Parts, iDunno, eNothing.
Sue everyone with a related name. Network Solutions will happily shut down all of your competitor's online sites with a court order from/any/ jurisdiction. If the first one turns you down, go judge shopping.
You IPO'd, right?
Write a book about how you hit it big in the stock market. The title should try to be "deep" but mean nothing, ie: "Business at the speed of thought".
*cough* See, etoys is just following The Advice... don't blame them. =)
No such thing. Can't happen. Doesn't exist. How arrogant of slashdot readers to assume they and they alone are the sum of geekdom. Since when was being a geek strictly computers? I know art geeks, car geeks, even *sports* geeks. There are some attributes that are generally accepted to be geeky, but all the candidates thus far do not meet those meager requirements. So before you go dropping your ballot, consider the following...
Geeks tend to have a wide range of political tastes. Really, about the only thing that's safe to say is that they're unconventional and anti-authoritarian.
Geeks are not (contrary to *cough* some websites) limited only to computers.
Most geeks would rather be doing what they like than out voting or trying to influence the stupid masses of people who vote. Just give me my xDSL and leave the internet alone, k?
Contrary to popular belief, Eric Raymond or Richard Stallman will not be running for president. You can still vote for them, however.
And this concludes my post. You may now moderate me down per the dogmatic policies.
I'm increasingly disappointed in how many governments treat freedom of information issues like this. The methods of controlling this information (namely, the legal system) are out of date and largely irrelevant to today's internet community. The internet's scope is international and the laws of one country do not extend to another. There are efforts underway to control this massive amount of freedom - the government likes it's information control and many have shown a willingness to give up some of their soverienty(sp?) in exchange for control over their citizenship.
This is disappointing, if only because it is doomed to fail. How many people here will change their computing habits if a decision were made outlawing DeCSS? Infact, how many people might start a development effort outside this country? The legal system is largely ineffective in dealing with this - witness the huge crypto debate. There is none: the world has crypto, and the US looks like a bunch of jackasses for trying to stop it. They didn't even put a dent in the flow of information out of this country. China isn't doing much better either - and they have thousands of firewalls and even more people dedicated strictly to censoring the internet. Information still gets out. There solution seems to be "kill anyone exhibiting independent thought online!" - history has, and will again, show that such tactics are ineffective.
This trial will be of no consequence to the community at large.... nothing will change except the amount of money exchanged over the matter. however, there is a question of moral obligation: should we help these people? Do we have an obligation to support people who risk their livelyhood to give us our freedom? This is, in my mind, the heart of this matter.
Read the book netslaves for some commentary on the state of affairs in Silicon Valley.
Now, my rant: I think societies treatment of social outcasts has not improved one bit. Instead of geeks being singled out and taunted, often outright ignored by schools... they go off to college and go through alittle culture shock because people care about their ideas and treat them as equals. What a shame that they go off into the workplace with this utopian view that "it's all better now". No, it's not. Many geeks are exploited - paid far less than they should be, minimal benefits, often hired as "temps" or given "excempt" status to limit vacation options and whatnot. They put in 16 hour days - but get paid only for 8.
No, it isn't worth it. The question is, what are we going to do about it? It's the same in most technically-oriented work environments. Shall we revolt? Pitch our Suns into the river and dump cat5 overboard because of the "Microsoft tax" and the unfair treatment our employers have given us? I don't know. But it was mighty nice imagery, anyway.
Coincidentally, he's also right. Don't take it as a slam on linux, it's not. What it is is a very short way of saying that linux doesn't have a GUI comparable to windows, that it is still too abrasive to neophyte computer users. I'll also take a personal stab at what linux needs - a decent filesystem. ext2 is slow on file deletions, and when mounted in it's default async mode can cause massive filesystem damage if the system crashes. This is not exactly clearly documented anywhere.
So he's right - there is lots of talk and lots of hype - just look at ZDNet and the mainstream press. Witness the VA Linux and Redhat IPOs. There's lots of hope too - Enlightenment and Gnome / KDE desktops are rapidly evolving. ReiserFS, Ext3, and SGI's fs (whose name escapes me at the moment) are all very fast filesystems.
The lovely thing is, as a defendant, there is federal legislation that says I can request a change of venue to my own local jurisdiction which they cannot (generally) refuse. Eh, I know approximately what I'm doing here - I'm not worried. The worst they'll do is offer me a cease and desist. If they tried to throw me in jail or something it would make national headlines... they won't risk it.
They didn't serve me, Who wants some DeCSS? I got source, I got source!!!!
Anybody ever play "whack the mole"? Watching these lawyers try to stop the flood of information is like playing the game - every time you smack one down with your mallet two more pop up.
If anyone wants the source, contact me. Oh yes, and I'm making a dare to any of the lawyers out there - whack this mole.
Netrek already addressed (and solved) this problem. Release the source to the clients under GPL or anything else - this is not a problem. HOWEVER, you use an encrypted key for each client (and each version) and the binary is compiled and encrypted. You can have servers in "open" mode where you can use untrusted clients, or closed, where only trusted (ie: binary only) clients are trusted. What's nice here is that the server operator can add keys for his newly-compiled client, ad nausuem. So if a binary ever gets hacked, simply yank the key and no more access. This requires that the server op be clued, but other than that it's a 1st class solution to this kind of hacking.
Why try to deny bots? Just give 'em there own servers...
In stories I've submitted with similar comments - those were stripped prior to posting, or otherwise modified. Hemos didn't have to post that, but he did anyway. In my book if you censor anything, you're responsible for everything. Hemos posted it.
Hemos, why must you make slams and inject your own commentary to stories? For that matter, why must slashdot? Calling people "blowhards" on a site that is making a genuine attempt to be taken seriously by mainstream is at the least shooting yourself in the foot.
If you want to make a comment, put it in the forums with everybody else's and let moderation take it's course.
I'm reminded of what another slashdotter recently posted:
- Mindcraft is known for making benchmarks to suit the manufacturer. - Benchmarks can be wildly manipulated... - Hence we should call this practice benchcrafting!
Well, I've heard the problem stems from the fact that the US Post Office, FedEX, and UPS were all sued by Amazon.com for using it's patented "one-click" technology - you know: *click* "sign here sir".
As a result, all your toys are still in a warehouse which was seized by Amazon.com for contractual compliance.....
That depends... do you believe your kernel exists? There is a probability that the code will compile optimally, but without viewing the results you can't compress the wave function and find out.... *muwhahahahahaahahahahaha!* It's like a Microsoft product: it seems really fast until you look!
Sounds alot like what these guys need to get a quantum computer working. Of course, how do you backup a quantum computer? As soon as you try you compress the wave function of the data and *poof* no more data. Of course, if you're content to never look at your data, it will remain in a perfect state..... =)
Well, I'll be buying this right after xmas - I've waited all this time, I can wait a few more days. What I'm miffed about is why it took so #$@! long. They should have released simultaniously - ID even said they would do this when they made the final release... they DID do concurrent releases during the demos / test builds. My only conclusion is that somebody wanted to see linux stumble alittle or skew the purchasing statistics. But if someone has a more simple explanation, that would probably be the correct one. Call me paranoid, but I think some big report will come out within the next three months pointing to the "failure" of Q3A for linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? Slashdot the bloody legal system, raise cain in the courtroom. Do Flynn on them. Make strawman cases... in general... just overload the system to such an extend it can no longer function. Brought down by it's own excesses... I love it. :)
the biggest thing Linux has done so far for the web is make web servers a commodity - run on cheap, commercial hardware, and do it well. That's a major accomplishment but it doesn't show in any of the server statistics.. yet.
Linux is more a social phenomenon than a technical one - most of what linux does other OS' do better - Windows is a better desktop, Solaris / FreeBSD is a better server, BeOS is more multimedia... Linux tries to do all things, but it has succeeded in doing nothing perfectly yet.
If you want to give linux credit - give it credit for the social phenomenon in the form of the open source / free software duality.
Great timeline, but it's all wrong! Here's the right one:
1999 - Al Gore invents internet
2000 - World ends.
connection refused *reload*
connection refused *reload*
connection timed out *reload*
500 internal server error *reload*
*reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload*
DO YOU AGREE TO THE CONDITIONS FOUND HEREIN, blah blah blah blah, sell your soul, blah blah blah blah...
Yes.
connection refused *reload*
connection refused *reload* *reload* *reload*
An e-mail is immediately being sent to l335h4x0rd00d@hotmail.com which you may use to access the compaq server(s) you have chosen at blah blah blah
The RIAA has some "laws" regarding music distribution. Know any geeks that follow them?
The federal government has "laws" about software copying, see many geeks following those laws?
The RFC system, quoted in your own dialog, is often overridden by technical necessity - the FIN_WAIT2 state, for example, has no timeout (look up SO_LINGER in your sockets book for a more detailed analysis). Solution - put one in and violate the standard. Many such "rules" have been bent, some of them outright broken. Witness Richard Stallman's recent POSIX_ME_HARDER post...
In short, I reaffirm my belief that geeks do not subscribe to any specific political beliefs. The only ideals I've found common amongst geeks is the so-called "hacker ethic".
- E-commerce DOES exist. It is not an IBM marketing phrase. Believe this. If in doubt, check out "datamation" or whatever magazine is sitting on your boss' desk right now.
- Patent everything.
- Aquire huge amounts of lawyers and money. Guns are frowned on - use them only internationally.
- Your trademark must consist of an easy to remember name - preferably one in the dictionary. Prefix the word with one of the following letters: "X, e, i". Example: eXtreme Computer Parts, iDunno, eNothing.
- Sue everyone with a related name. Network Solutions will happily shut down all of your competitor's online sites with a court order from
/any/ jurisdiction. If the first one turns you down, go judge shopping. - You IPO'd, right?
- Write a book about how you hit it big in the stock market. The title should try to be "deep" but mean nothing, ie: "Business at the speed of thought".
*cough* See, etoys is just following The Advice... don't blame them. =)And this concludes my post. You may now moderate me down per the dogmatic policies.
-
-
-
-
-
This is disappointing, if only because it is doomed to fail. How many people here will change their computing habits if a decision were made outlawing DeCSS? Infact, how many people might start a development effort outside this country? The legal system is largely ineffective in dealing with this - witness the huge crypto debate. There is none: the world has crypto, and the US looks like a bunch of jackasses for trying to stop it. They didn't even put a dent in the flow of information out of this country. China isn't doing much better either - and they have thousands of firewalls and even more people dedicated strictly to censoring the internet. Information still gets out. There solution seems to be "kill anyone exhibiting independent thought online!" - history has, and will again, show that such tactics are ineffective.
This trial will be of no consequence to the community at large.... nothing will change except the amount of money exchanged over the matter. however, there is a question of moral obligation: should we help these people? Do we have an obligation to support people who risk their livelyhood to give us our freedom? This is, in my mind, the heart of this matter.
Now, my rant: I think societies treatment of social outcasts has not improved one bit. Instead of geeks being singled out and taunted, often outright ignored by schools... they go off to college and go through alittle culture shock because people care about their ideas and treat them as equals. What a shame that they go off into the workplace with this utopian view that "it's all better now". No, it's not. Many geeks are exploited - paid far less than they should be, minimal benefits, often hired as "temps" or given "excempt" status to limit vacation options and whatnot. They put in 16 hour days - but get paid only for 8.
No, it isn't worth it. The question is, what are we going to do about it? It's the same in most technically-oriented work environments. Shall we revolt? Pitch our Suns into the river and dump cat5 overboard because of the "Microsoft tax" and the unfair treatment our employers have given us? I don't know. But it was mighty nice imagery, anyway.
Coincidentally, he's also right. Don't take it as a slam on linux, it's not. What it is is a very short way of saying that linux doesn't have a GUI comparable to windows, that it is still too abrasive to neophyte computer users. I'll also take a personal stab at what linux needs - a decent filesystem. ext2 is slow on file deletions, and when mounted in it's default async mode can cause massive filesystem damage if the system crashes. This is not exactly clearly documented anywhere.
So he's right - there is lots of talk and lots of hype - just look at ZDNet and the mainstream press. Witness the VA Linux and Redhat IPOs. There's lots of hope too - Enlightenment and Gnome / KDE desktops are rapidly evolving. ReiserFS, Ext3, and SGI's fs (whose name escapes me at the moment) are all very fast filesystems.
The lovely thing is, as a defendant, there is federal legislation that says I can request a change of venue to my own local jurisdiction which they cannot (generally) refuse. Eh, I know approximately what I'm doing here - I'm not worried. The worst they'll do is offer me a cease and desist. If they tried to throw me in jail or something it would make national headlines... they won't risk it.
Let them try to call a few hundred thousand people into court... I'd like to see that. =)
Anybody ever play "whack the mole"? Watching these lawyers try to stop the flood of information is like playing the game - every time you smack one down with your mallet two more pop up.
If anyone wants the source, contact me. Oh yes, and I'm making a dare to any of the lawyers out there - whack this mole.
Why try to deny bots? Just give 'em there own servers...
In stories I've submitted with similar comments - those were stripped prior to posting, or otherwise modified. Hemos didn't have to post that, but he did anyway. In my book if you censor anything, you're responsible for everything. Hemos posted it.
If you want to make a comment, put it in the forums with everybody else's and let moderation take it's course.
- Mindcraft is known for making benchmarks to suit the manufacturer.
- Benchmarks can be wildly manipulated... - Hence we should call this practice benchcrafting!
Well, I've heard the problem stems from the fact that the US Post Office, FedEX, and UPS were all sued by Amazon.com for using it's patented "one-click" technology - you know: *click* "sign here sir".
As a result, all your toys are still in a warehouse which was seized by Amazon.com for contractual compliance.....
That depends... do you believe your kernel exists? There is a probability that the code will compile optimally, but without viewing the results you can't compress the wave function and find out.... *muwhahahahahaahahahahaha!* It's like a Microsoft product: it seems really fast until you look!
Sounds alot like what these guys need to get a quantum computer working. Of course, how do you backup a quantum computer? As soon as you try you compress the wave function of the data and *poof* no more data. Of course, if you're content to never look at your data, it will remain in a perfect state..... =)
WELCOME BACK!
Well, I'll be buying this right after xmas - I've waited all this time, I can wait a few more days. What I'm miffed about is why it took so #$@! long. They should have released simultaniously - ID even said they would do this when they made the final release... they DID do concurrent releases during the demos / test builds. My only conclusion is that somebody wanted to see linux stumble alittle or skew the purchasing statistics. But if someone has a more simple explanation, that would probably be the correct one. Call me paranoid, but I think some big report will come out within the next three months pointing to the "failure" of Q3A for linux.
Like I said - rational, not logical.
I did not use my Bastard Tongue +1.... check the stats..... I did, however, roll a natural 20 and lop your head off.