They've stated the headline backwards! It should be:
EU software patent directive makes Munich's Unix migration difficult.
The moment Germany caved on Software Patents they ensured that free software would require licenses simply to continue to exist and be compatible with any commercial software.
Hence, any government (e.g. Munich) hoping to use open source or free software will eventually be unable to do so and still retain compatibility with common commercial software. It's a foregone conclusion.
Case in point: Samba. It's only a matter of months before Microsoft uses patents to kill Samba and all similar communications compatibility with Open Source software. How will this affect Munich?
I really do hope this brings the German delegation to the EU back to their senses, but I fear it's too late.
By the way, the ffii site seems to be down. Anyone know why?
Well said! I can't really befriend anyone with one email, (that takes an awful lot of charm!) and the amount of sucking-up I'd have to do might cause enough nausea among the community to constitute a genuine biohazard. But consider me friendly. And I'd just love a Gmail account.
As for the sex joke, check this little song and video (almost safe for work):
The Camel Toe Song
This is the device you're looking for. I just saw it mentioned about two weeks ago. It's a paper-white black/white display using Electronic Ink technology:
First time someone's come close to the real issue.
in 1985, "Windows" was a generic term for a graphical-based interface. "Microsoft Windows" was applied for as a trademark, and REJECTED because it was already in generic use for that EXACT application. It took MS until 1995, using some (possibly underhanded) court tactics, to achieve an essentially undefendable trademark on that name.
Lindows is challenging the trademark, not their right to have a similar one. It's as if "American Airlines" tried to sue any other airline for having "Airlines" in their name. It's generic.
Interesting to compare Garfinkel's view on IPv6 vs NAT (IPv6 'encourages Peer-to-peer copyright violations') with John Walker's announcement today that he's Withdrawing Speak Freely due to the takeover of NAT.
Walker sees NAT as encroaching oppression by the "powers that be", whereas Garfinkel seems to take the "powers that be" point of view! Simson how you've changed!
In fact, Walker is skeptical that even IPv6 could promote "consumers" back to "peers":
First of all, any bets on when IPv6 will actually be implemented end-to-end for a substantial percentage of individual Internet users? And even if it were, don't bet on NAT going away. Certainly it will change, but once the powers that be have demoted Internet users from peers to consumers, I don't think they're likely to turn around and re-empower them just because the address space is now big enough.
I was about to mod this one down as a troll, but I changed my mind and decided to rise to the bait instead. This type of authoritative-looking FUD is dangerous and must be met with information and insight. So I'll take this straight.
I tend to agree with the guy you're trashing here, kuzb, and I think that with a little thought you could have agreed with him too.
- All protocols, APIs and data formats fully documented.
They are documented, that documentation is not always free though.
I think he's referring to deliberately mysterious protocols like SMB and WORD format, which are not just "not free", but actually proprietary and can't be used without an agreement with Microsoft. And this secrecy noticeably impacts Windows users (by forcing incompatibilities with foreign and older systems).
Hence Microsoft plays a zero-sum game with their own customers, not just their competitors, which I'd consider, well, kind of evil.
- All security holes disguised as features closed, permanently, and no new ones added, ever.
Exactly which security holes did MS disguise as features?
Well, ActiveX and Office Macros, for two. ActiveX is especially bad since it's possible to implant viruses or worse in anyone who visits your WEBSITE!
- A promise that existing formats will be readable and losslessly convertable to future formats, forever.
You're not very clear here. Formats for what?
How about DOC, XLS, and SMB for a start?
- No forced upgrades.
Upgrading is inevitable. MS does not force you to upgrade. If no one ever had to upgrade in the Linux world, we'd all be using kernels from 1990. MS doesn't force anyone to upgrade, people upgrade because they want the new offerings included in those upgrades. Hell, if you still want to use windows 98 these days, most software will still run under it.
That's just disingenuous, you're parroting the MS party line. Name ONE feature that people upgraded from Office 97 to Office 2000 for. Or from Office 2000 to Office 2003. There are none. They upgrade because they need to to communicate with others using the newer formats. Or because new computers come with the new OS and make it hard to network with the older ones. Ask any IT department. As the original poster clarified:
- # No coerced upgrades, where existing users have to plead with people who have already upgraded to jump through hoops to avoid sending unreadable new formats.
This isn't MS's problem, it's yours. If you want to cling to old formats, outdated software and outmoded formats, that's your problem.
This is just an obvious troll. Two years old is not "old, outdated" or "outmoded", it's "in common use" and should be supported transparently. Not doing so is simply coercion.
Cats are being genetically engineered to make them hypo-allergenic.
I would love to see a follow-up on the above article, it's been a year and I want my non-sniffly cats soon please!
The Harry Fletcher article claims 14 million hits on "linux windows". Taco's summary (a week later) claims 9 million. I just tried and got 5.97 million. Is Goooogle trying to reduce the number of hits to match MS?
...Much worse than "Citibank didn't care". Look down lower on the SecurityFocus report and you'll see that Citibank's own fraud reporting webpage appears to be compromised, they know about it, and they hadn't (as of publication date) tried to correct it. The email reply from the fraud page is itself fraudulent, and directs users to a nonexistent toll-free number or a private AOL email address, although it appears to come from Citibank's own servers!
Also, there's a CNET article about the August 16 version of the scam, reported on August 18, 2003. The article is supposed to be here at
http://news.com.com/2011-10173-5065394.html?tag=ma instry
(Link)
But when you check that link, it first comes up, then a second or two later gets redirected to a search page claiming that the article is "expired".
Strangely, the CNET search page (which searches on terms similar to the title) comes up with 2 flattering articles about Citibank's quality process, one dated 2002, the other dated 2000. Neither of those articles has "expired". Draw your own conclusions here.
For those who aren't too quick on the mouse, part of the text of the "expired" article is here:
Citibank, a division of Citigroup, said "numerous" people received the e-mail, which purported to advise them of conditions affecting their accounts.
It said the e-mail linked to a Web site that looks like Citibank's, and asked customers for their Social Security numbers, a form of identification. Scammers can use such data to obtain credit cards or access to bank and other accounts.
The bank urged recipients to delete the e-mail and call the customer service number on their automatic teller machine cards. It said that the company is working with law enforcement and that its systems have not been compromised.
SecurityFocus notes that Citibank should know the exact number of people who came to their website from the fraudulent redirection, although officials there claim not to know. It also seems unlikely that Citibank's systems were not compromised, considering the email replies that came from their "report fraud" webpage.
First, I don't know the version, it's whatever I downloaded (repeatedly) this spring and summertime from the website. Might have been beta. Sucked memory until the computer died.
Second, I totally believe you that RealOne is all those bad things you say (although it at least doesn't seem to keep demanding "MORE" memory, it just takes its huge allotment and chugs.) I'm not by any means advertising for it, just trying to be constructive.
And third, I was on Windows NT, YMMV. RealOne seems to work okay, but I'm sure there are plenty others (possibly including the latest WinAmp) that work better.
Winamp on a PC (as of about 6 months ago) leaked memory so severely that it would shut down a computer after an hour or a day. I had to stop using it and tell all my employees to do the same.
Unless they've fixed this problem recently, try an alternative player/mm. I've found RealOne pretty good, and free, but I haven't really settled on a favorite.
This works if you have your own domain. Thanks to Andrew for this idea: Put the harvestable email on your site. Also, on the same site, (less conspicously), post a similar email address, with the same domain and a similar username. Don't ever give out the second address, it's just for spam. The magnet address may be in the code but not visible, for best effect. Or make it a real mailto:link, but in invisible color and font.
Write a small filter program on your site that stores all spam coming from the spam magnet address for a week, and deletes any incoming spam on your own email address that looks too much like it. Any mail that comes to both at once is automatically deleted.
If you have a Bayesian filter, use the spammagnet address to continuously feed the filter's blacklist.
so if your address is harvey@nagila.com, post a spammagnet address on the same pages such as hardly@nagila.com. The similarity will tend to catch the spam mailers that group addressees.
Hmmm.... It must take a lot of money to buy lawyers and PR firms to keep this FUD in the public eye and share the sh*t out of the corporations and governments.
I can't imagine what kind of company *cough* (icrosoft) *cough* could be putting up all that money.
Paying other companies to create FUD is hardly a new tactic for them. Recall certain "independent" findings from certain research groups....
If you can make it through all the MySQL-haters rantings, (can somebody mod those guys down, it's off-topic!), here are my current conclusions after using mysql 4.0 in an industrial app (27 million records, about 1 million queries daily).
1. It works good. No crashes and no more problems than the 3.23 versions. 2. The replication still isn't there yet. If replication matters to you, wait. 3. I agree it's not "alpha". It is no more or less buggy than the stable 3.23.51 version.
I will be very happy when replication is working and tested and works on ALL queries and can recover from errors. Until then it's still a day of fooling around every time replication screws up.
This comes from a Chuck Jones fan who went a little too far. Realizing about 10 years ago that all my favorite cartoons had been written by the same guy, I went and investigated his life. I also bought a few of his more recent signed works (he did amazing cels and giclee' art ).
Chuck Jones had an excellent wit, which you can experience in his two hilarious and informative biographies, Chuck Amuck and Chuck Reducks. His writing is dry and Mark-Twainish, with personal touches that never get *too* personal.
There's a more subtle point here that people are missing in the free-speech/censorship argument.
China could learn a lot about effective censorship from the U.S.! America has its own form of censorship that operates without threats or legal constraints, yet is very powerful, I think.
For the last half-century at least, American press and public have remained free to air "mainstream" views all they wish.
Mainstream views also include direct disagreement with mainstream views, which allows for an apparent "freedom" to disagree.
But many other views exist, which may step
back from the whole argument and try to see a larger pattern. No I'm not espousing any particular one of these. They often include conspiracy theories, right-wing militant anti-govt. theories, etc., and I'm not a nutcase.
But I think there's an interesting tacit agreement in place among the mainstream press not to give any airtime to anything flaky or paranoid, even if it seems like it might be right. If they do mention these ideas, it's always a single incident, quickly forgotten among the sensationalist news that nobody disagrees on. Misdirection and distraction.
You're looking for an example, right? Ok, but
you won't like it. That's part of the process.
If, in the future, hypothetically, the president of the U.S. were to, say, have someone killed to protect his own reputation, and the circumstances surrounding that death were suspicious, what would happen?
Assuming that there was no obvious evidence connecting the president to the victim, the press would, I assume, all report the official story and forget about it.
Anyone using a public forum like the internet to suggest that the official story seemed fishy would be humored but considered paranoid, and ignored. The "independent press" might print something, the "mainstream press" would not, and
people would be grateful for not having to think.
That's how Americans censor themselves. Just ask Ex-Enron exec Clifford Baxter.
I'm not saying this is true, but it's a nice example of self-censorship that nobody else has read articles like this... If it has even a 10% chance of being true, a truly free press would, I think, be pursuing it. But they won't.
Check out Henrik Kniberg's
White Orb project in Java.
It's now defunct, but has source code and lots of documentation and design decision records, and may be a good place to start. No licensing problems either! Developed by a small international team.
Whoa, Nelly! If you think Cryptnet and the 'drummers' are not fully explained and exploited, you missed the point of everything John does since Dr. X gets ahold of him. You many want to read this one again. Stephenson plays with your mind a bit in the second half of the book, but if you are reading carefully (and maybe more than once), you will see the drummers are the key. (Pun intended) He lets you put it together for yourself, though, no spoonfeeding from NS.
Hint: The Cryptnet people seem to mysteriously disappear after they reach a certain high level. The drummers appear out of nowhere and enable John to decrypt stuff that is theoretically undecryptable, using methods that go beyond (or perhaps below) cryptography into the realm of the collective consciousness. Read it again and see.
I love the way Snow Crash makes you put together all the pieces yourself, too. He's a master at sketching the really visionary ideas, without actually hitting you over the head with them. If the first read didn't do it, try again, it may be worth it!
Steve snailshell petabit tinycircle com
if you want to talk to me.
For those interested in whose SQL it is anyway, it appears to me that MySQL AB won the dispute. They got the offending site taken down and redirected, and in return appear to have removed their story from their own web site. You can get Mysql AB's side of the story from Google's cache here.
- It's genetic
- It's on the rise
- It's not a disease and can't be cured.
- It's higher in the children of smart people
- It makes the kids bad at some things, better at others.
Even without knowing what those things are, if someone just presented me with these points, I'd say it sounds like the humans are evolving.
So let's look at what they're evolving into:
No social skills : looks like they'll need to get in touch with people through computer chat instead, huh?
High intelligence, repetitive behavior: I bet the new humans are really good at video games.
Low verbal skills: Looks like voice interfaces won't be the way of the future.
When more than 30% of new humans are "Autistic" we may start to find out what they're best at, and we may find that the future needs them more than 'us'. Assuming I'm not already one of them. I suspect I am.
Slashdot Mirror
You're looking at the wrong libertarians.
Allow me to recommend a very insightful bunch who
definitely understand the various forms of fraud Governments can play on people:
The Daily Reckoning
EU software patent directive makes Munich's Unix migration difficult.
The moment Germany caved on Software Patents they ensured that free software would require licenses simply to continue to exist and be compatible with any commercial software.
Hence, any government (e.g. Munich) hoping to use open source or free software will eventually be unable to do so and still retain compatibility with common commercial software. It's a foregone conclusion.
Case in point: Samba. It's only a matter of months before Microsoft uses patents to kill Samba and all similar communications compatibility with Open Source software. How will this affect Munich?
I really do hope this brings the German delegation to the EU back to their senses, but I fear it's too late. By the way, the ffii site seems to be down. Anyone know why?
Well said! I can't really befriend anyone with one email, (that takes an awful lot of charm!) and the amount of sucking-up I'd have to do might cause enough nausea among the community to constitute a genuine biohazard. But consider me friendly. And I'd just love a Gmail account.
As for the sex joke, check this little song and video (almost safe for work): The Camel Toe Song
Intel says Adios to Tejas and Jayhawk chips
The Electronic Ink E-book reader
Another article
First time someone's come close to the real issue.
in 1985, "Windows" was a generic term for a graphical-based interface. "Microsoft Windows" was applied for as a trademark, and REJECTED because it was already in generic use for that EXACT application. It took MS until 1995, using some (possibly underhanded) court tactics, to achieve an essentially undefendable trademark on that name.
Lindows is challenging the trademark, not their right to have a similar one. It's as if "American Airlines" tried to sue any other airline for having "Airlines" in their name. It's generic.
Read the article.
Walker sees NAT as encroaching oppression by the "powers that be", whereas Garfinkel seems to take the "powers that be" point of view! Simson how you've changed!
In fact, Walker is skeptical that even IPv6 could promote "consumers" back to "peers":
I tend to agree with the guy you're trashing here, kuzb, and I think that with a little thought you could have agreed with him too.
I think he's referring to deliberately mysterious protocols like SMB and WORD format, which are not just "not free", but actually proprietary and can't be used without an agreement with Microsoft. And this secrecy noticeably impacts Windows users (by forcing incompatibilities with foreign and older systems). Hence Microsoft plays a zero-sum game with their own customers, not just their competitors, which I'd consider, well, kind of evil. Well, ActiveX and Office Macros, for two. ActiveX is especially bad since it's possible to implant viruses or worse in anyone who visits your WEBSITE! How about DOC, XLS, and SMB for a start? That's just disingenuous, you're parroting the MS party line. Name ONE feature that people upgraded from Office 97 to Office 2000 for. Or from Office 2000 to Office 2003. There are none. They upgrade because they need to to communicate with others using the newer formats. Or because new computers come with the new OS and make it hard to network with the older ones. Ask any IT department. As the original poster clarified: This is just an obvious troll. Two years old is not "old, outdated" or "outmoded", it's "in common use" and should be supported transparently. Not doing so is simply coercion.http://www.transgenicpets.com/default.htm
Too bad, could someone please fund these guys?
Steve
Cats are being genetically engineered to make them hypo-allergenic. I would love to see a follow-up on the above article, it's been a year and I want my non-sniffly cats soon please!
Interesting?
The Harry Fletcher article claims 14 million hits on "linux windows". Taco's summary (a week later) claims 9 million. I just tried and got 5.97 million. Is Goooogle trying to reduce the number of hits to match MS?
...Much worse than "Citibank didn't care". Look down lower on the SecurityFocus report and you'll see that Citibank's own fraud reporting webpage appears to be compromised, they know about it, and they hadn't (as of publication date) tried to correct it. The email reply from the fraud page is itself fraudulent, and directs users to a nonexistent toll-free number or a private AOL email address, although it appears to come from Citibank's own servers!
Also, there's a CNET article about the August 16 version of the scam, reported on August 18, 2003. The article is supposed to be here at http://news.com.com/2011-10173-5065394.html?tag=ma instry
(Link)
But when you check that link, it first comes up, then a second or two later gets redirected to a search page claiming that the article is "expired".
Strangely, the CNET search page (which searches on terms similar to the title) comes up with 2 flattering articles about Citibank's quality process, one dated 2002, the other dated 2000. Neither of those articles has "expired". Draw your own conclusions here.
For those who aren't too quick on the mouse, part of the text of the "expired" article is here:
SecurityFocus notes that Citibank should know the exact number of people who came to their website from the fraudulent redirection, although officials there claim not to know. It also seems unlikely that Citibank's systems were not compromised, considering the email replies that came from their "report fraud" webpage.Good thing I posted disclaimers --
First, I don't know the version, it's whatever I downloaded (repeatedly) this spring and summertime from the website. Might have been beta. Sucked memory until the computer died.
Second, I totally believe you that RealOne is all those bad things you say (although it at least
doesn't seem to keep demanding "MORE" memory, it just takes its huge allotment and chugs.) I'm not by any means advertising for it, just trying to be constructive.
And third, I was on Windows NT, YMMV. RealOne seems to work okay, but I'm sure there are plenty others (possibly including the latest WinAmp) that work better.
Thanks for the reply,
Steve
Warning on Winamp:
Winamp on a PC (as of about 6 months ago) leaked memory so severely that it would shut down a computer after an hour or a day. I had to stop using it and tell all my employees to do the same.
Unless they've fixed this problem recently, try an alternative player/mm. I've found RealOne pretty good, and free, but I haven't really settled on a favorite.
This works if you have your own domain. Thanks to Andrew for this idea: Put the harvestable email on your site. Also, on the same site, (less conspicously), post a similar email address, with the same domain and a similar username. Don't ever give out the second address, it's just for spam. The magnet address may be in the code but not visible, for best effect. Or make it a real mailto:link, but in invisible color and font.
Write a small filter program on your site that stores all spam coming from the spam magnet address for a week, and deletes any incoming spam on your own email address that looks too much like it. Any mail that comes to both at once is automatically deleted.
If you have a Bayesian filter, use the spammagnet address to continuously feed the filter's blacklist.
so if your address is harvey@nagila.com, post
a spammagnet address on the same pages such as hardly@nagila.com. The similarity will tend to catch the spam mailers that group addressees.
Hmmm.... It must take a lot of money to buy lawyers and PR firms to keep this FUD in the public eye and share the sh*t out of the corporations and governments.
I can't imagine what kind of company *cough* (icrosoft) *cough* could be putting up all that money.
Paying other companies to create FUD is hardly a new tactic for them. Recall certain "independent" findings from certain research groups....
If I'm right, you heard it here first.
Steve Rapaport
...or even cooler, someone spoofs the IP address of said server, and any network fooled gets all its drives wiped. The possibilities are endless...
If you can make it through all the MySQL-haters rantings, (can somebody mod those guys down, it's off-topic!), here are my current conclusions after using mysql 4.0 in an industrial app (27 million records, about 1 million queries daily).
1. It works good. No crashes and no more problems than the 3.23 versions.
2. The replication still isn't there yet. If replication matters to you, wait.
3. I agree it's not "alpha". It is no more or less buggy than the stable 3.23.51 version.
I will be very happy when replication is working and tested and works on ALL queries and can recover from errors. Until then it's still a day of fooling around every time replication screws up.
Chuck Jones had an excellent wit, which you can experience in his two hilarious and informative biographies, Chuck Amuck and Chuck Reducks . His writing is dry and Mark-Twainish, with personal touches that never get *too* personal.
His recent work (he was creating Shockwave cartoons of "Thomas Timberwolf" up to this month!) is available linked from his own website.
Anyway, enough karmawhoring, I am writing this with tears in my eyes. So long and that's all folks to my last American hero.
--Bugs Bunny, What's Opera, Doc?Rec.Humour.Funny recently posted an elegant
answer to Asian spam, at least when it originates from China...
I don't want to give it away, read the link, but I promise any Chinese spammer getting this email in reply won't be sending spam for long...
China could learn a lot about effective censorship from the U.S.! America has its own form of censorship that operates without threats or legal constraints, yet is very powerful, I think.
For the last half-century at least, American press and public have remained free to air "mainstream" views all they wish.
Mainstream views also include direct disagreement with mainstream views, which allows for an apparent "freedom" to disagree.
But many other views exist, which may step back from the whole argument and try to see a larger pattern. No I'm not espousing any particular one of these. They often include conspiracy theories, right-wing militant anti-govt. theories, etc., and I'm not a nutcase.
But I think there's an interesting tacit agreement in place among the mainstream press not to give any airtime to anything flaky or paranoid, even if it seems like it might be right. If they do mention these ideas, it's always a single incident, quickly forgotten among the sensationalist news that nobody disagrees on. Misdirection and distraction.
You're looking for an example, right? Ok, but you won't like it. That's part of the process.
If, in the future, hypothetically, the president of the U.S. were to, say, have someone killed to protect his own reputation, and the circumstances surrounding that death were suspicious, what would happen?
Assuming that there was no obvious evidence connecting the president to the victim, the press would, I assume, all report the official story and forget about it.
Anyone using a public forum like the internet to suggest that the official story seemed fishy would be humored but considered paranoid, and ignored. The "independent press" might print something, the "mainstream press" would not, and people would be grateful for not having to think.
That's how Americans censor themselves. Just ask Ex-Enron exec Clifford Baxter.
I'm not saying this is true, but it's a nice example of self-censorship that nobody else has read articles like this... If it has even a 10% chance of being true, a truly free press would, I think, be pursuing it. But they won't.
Steve
White Orb project in Java.
It's now defunct, but has source code and lots of documentation and design decision records, and may be a good place to start. No licensing problems either! Developed by a small international team.
Steve.
Hint: The Cryptnet people seem to mysteriously disappear after they reach a certain high level. The drummers appear out of nowhere and enable John to decrypt stuff that is theoretically undecryptable, using methods that go beyond (or perhaps below) cryptography into the realm of the collective consciousness. Read it again and see.
I love the way Snow Crash makes you put together all the pieces yourself, too. He's a master at sketching the really visionary ideas, without actually hitting you over the head with them. If the first read didn't do it, try again, it may be worth it!
Steve snailshell petabit tinycircle com
if you want to talk to me.
For those interested in whose SQL it is anyway, it appears to me that MySQL AB won the dispute. They got the offending site taken down and redirected, and in return appear to have removed their story from their own web site. You can get Mysql AB's side of the story from Google's cache here.
Okay, let's look at the evidence presented:
- It's genetic
- It's on the rise
- It's not a disease and can't be cured.
- It's higher in the children of smart people
- It makes the kids bad at some things, better at others.
Even without knowing what those things are, if someone just presented me with these points, I'd say it sounds like the humans are evolving.
So let's look at what they're evolving into:
No social skills : looks like they'll need to get in touch with people through computer chat instead, huh?
High intelligence, repetitive behavior: I bet the new humans are really good at video games.
Low verbal skills: Looks like voice interfaces won't be the way of the future.
When more than 30% of new humans are "Autistic" we may start to find out what they're best at, and we may find that the future needs them more than 'us'. Assuming I'm not already one of them. I suspect I am.