Oh, really? Perhaps it is you that is barely above being a trollish shill. But let Slashdot readers decide for themselves. "How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved" is a very worthwhile article about IP and the music business. Have a read. It's hardly tabloid material.
Or if exposing the stupidity of the music industry attitudes towards copyright and the internet is not enough, how about the Register's expose of Microsoft's misleading security claims. Try this for sizeSecurity Report: Windows vs Linux
Anyone with half a brain can see this coverage is far superior to the usual shashdot fare.
Let's nail this one, right now. Just as a house or a car can be made to resist intruders (or positively invite them) so can a computer operating system.
It's *not* *just* a matter of popularity. Windows' susceptibility to malware is also a matter of, ahem, design. Part of Windows' "ease of use" is to positively invite programs on other machines to order *your* machine around. Worse, MS has made use of stuff internally in the OS which should be reserved for inter-machine communication. For example, unlike in Linux, RPC cannot be turned off in Windows.
Windows is vulnerable by design, folks. Mac and Linux are not. Get used to it.
I think I'd rather be able to *tell* the thieves how to decrypt the data in my absence, rather than have them lop bits off of me to achieve the same ends. YMMV:)
Mr Kumaran, a Malaysian accountant, had a Mercedes protected by biometric finfger print recognition. He still lost his car to thieves, tho' -- and the end of his finger as well.
You can read about the, uhh, downside, to finger-print recognition here.
OK, so the Merc was worth USD 75,000 to the thieves, a little more than a laptop. But if a dead finger works, a plastic replica would work as well. Before using a system like this, it may be worth considering the value that the data on a laptop might have to unscrupulous rivals...
Is it worth this kind of horror to protect the laptop itself? There are easier and better ways to protect *data*.
Well, John Locke wouldn't have liked them, I'm so sure of that, I think I can imagine what he'd have said.
Patents are to control the duplication, the manufacture, of physical machines of one sort or another. Copyright is to control the duplication, the copying, of expressions of one form or another.
Computer software is an effective expression for controlling the workings of a determinate engine. As expressions, programs are adequately protected by copyright.
One source of confusion is that special purpose circuitry can be patented. A circuit is a lump of matter, a body, a physical machine. It's not like most machines tho, as its design can also be realised in software, using a general purpose computer. But that's just the way it is with electronics. Some machines can be patented, but when those same machines are realised in software, the work needs to be protected by copyright instead.
It's the embodiment of an idea that can be patented, not the expression of an idea. Allowing that the expression of an idea may be patented, makes it possible to be sued for writing math or program code, or even thinking about it.
And that is a profound violation of the right to freedoms of thought and expression.
To Our Valued Readers: (May 13, 2005) - Our syndication arrangement with LinuxGram has recently ended after ethical questions raised by our readers in one of the stories published in last week's issue. I agree with their view on this matter; therefore I pulled the article shortly after it was published earlier this week. I apologize to our readers, to the open source community, our LinuxWorld editors, and Ms. Pamela Jones for publishing the article. Fuat Kircaali Publisher, SYS-CON Media
It's not funny -- it's just pathetic.
As two people have pointed out (I'm the third) there is *NO* grammatical error in the quoted sentence.
It is funny to sneer at others' correct grammar? I don't think so. Not even on Slashdot.
(RMS) has a particular purpose in mind, which is forcing everyone to release source to their software.
Please could you cite your source for this? I mean, I agree that there is a case to be made that any software offered for sale should "display its ingredients" as it were. One could argue that people and corporations should have a right to see what the software they need to run actually does.
But I'm not sure that RMS has specifically called for legislation on this. Can you help out with a
reference to back up your claim, please?
Great article? I don't think so. It is pretty amazing that someone can write an article about software wars while ignoring licensing issues. Like software licenses don't matter in the slightest...
Nor can one coherently argue that GNU/Linux attracts long-term Unix users (as the author does when he predicts Sun's demise at the hands of GNU/Linux), and, at the same time argue that Linux will *promote* fragmentation. Either Linux is unifying the unix market, or it is fragmenting it. It can't be doing both...
The article ignores the fact that the old Unix wars were between *secret-source* versions of Unix, that is, between *proprietory* code bases, backed by proprietory EULAs. There will not be "Linux" wars that mirror the old "Unix" wars just because of the GPL. No Linux distributor can break another's software. Any "better" version of GNU/Linux can be studied and copied, and the improvements rolled up by any other distributor of GNU/Linux.
The GPL is what makes Linux different from the old unices. It is why GNU/Linux has already reversed the splintering and fragmentation of the unices; and why we see it continues to convert users of proprietary systems (unix or otherwise).
You have just given us your conclusions, without showing your reasoning.
I *own* a music track I purchase in exactly the same why I *own* a book. I don't care if some idiot has put guff on the cover of the book saying I cannot make an audio copy of it, or scan it to my PC and have some voice synth program read the OCR'd text. I don't care, because I do *not* have a contract with the publisher. I've just bought their goods, that's all. I've bought their goods in a public market, made possible by a public commercial code, and public enforcement mechanisms. And I'll do as I please with my own property, because those public enforcement mechanisms -- in particular, juries -- will support my fair use.
Of course, I have not bought the copyright. But that does not mean that my culture and legal system has to give any credence at all to any so-called "End User Agreement" that prevents my personal enjoyment of my own property.
In short, I defy a jury to convict me if I copy my own book to my own PC for my own use. Or a picture; or video.
In England, no one ever bothered to bring suit against any consumer who has made a tape cassette copy of an LP. No-one has bothered because no jury would convict. Digital media are no different in that regard. We will make *personal* use our *own* personal property as we see fit.
Juries do not have to collude in dening personal property rights. In England at least, they can just refuse to convict.
GP:... if a bug affects IE then it probably also affects Outlook, Outlook Express, MS Help and gawd knows what else.
P: The alternative, of course, is to have seperate HTML rendering components for every application that wishes to render HTML.
Dunno why this scored three -- the grandparent is right, and the parent is wrong. So the (only?!) alternative is to have separate html rendering components for every application that wished to render html, is it? Why so? I think we should be told!
All that's needed is for the html rendering to run is userspace, rather than kernel space. That is actually what khtml does, which yes, is integrated tightly with the KDE graphical shell, but not with the kernel.
Fixing a bug in IE can mean fixing a bug in kernel code -- and that bug in the kernel code might affect dozens of other applications. You don't have to build things that way. That was the grandparent's point.
If you don't want OO, there's nothing to stop you from using an OO language like Python in the traditional procedural way.
Actually, I'd argue that's the "right" way to code some problems. I'm thinking particularly of the read-a-record; process it; write a record kind of processing that lies at the heart of much business computing. But that model of processing sucks badly when you try to write interactive applications. It's *much* easier to model or describe an interactive system in OO.
It's not so much that *everything* has to be OO. It's more that Python and the ilk have the advantages of OO available if needed.
name an open source application... who are moving into the anti-virus market?
Oh, you haven't heard? Try Clam anti-virus at http://www.clamav.net/
It is of course in everyone's direct interests to support an open, free global anti-virus network like Clam, rather than pay for secret source snake oil that does you-know-not-what.
I am strongly in favour of freedom from religion. I can hardly put the case for this any better than Thomas Huxley put it, way back in 1889 >>>
it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of [believes] the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty... (it is immoral to assert) that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence.
Simple, huh? Religion is not only bunk -- it is immoral and harmful bunk. It is the duty of moral and honest people to oppose it, and debunk it.
What about those who are morally or religiously opposed to abortion?
I'd say if those who have moral reasons are also democrats (!), then they can abide by the democratic results.
As for those who have religious reasons -- what concern is that of the state? The USA is not a country that can inflict sharia, or any other religiously motivated laws, on its people.
P.S. It would be greatly appreciated if someone could please clarify my point. It's buried in there somewhere...
Quite a while back, I wrote a piece called The Talking Penguin", which I think might do what you ask. It starts...
There is nothing inherently visual about computing. Digital processors read their instructions from files or streams of binary text. They report back to the outside world in the same telegraphic language, translated into character sets and painted onto a matrix of glowing (or light absorbing) pixels. The video graphics array, who needs it? Talking Tux needs the phonetic intonation string, then these missives could as easily be spoken.
...
Most developers expect to read the results of their efforts off of a screen; and the core of the system expects to issue streams of text that are displayed and not spoken. That is, the kernel is written to interface with hardware that writes, not hardware that speaks.
Interfaces on the kernel need to be handled with care. Linus Thorvald's paper in Linux World is worth reading in this context. The objection to extra interfaces on the kernel is that they are "fixed in stone". Once defined, interfaces must be preserved through all future releases of the kernel - or the new release will break existing code based on the old interface definition.
A talking kernel (strictly, a speech interface on the kernel) gives a system that can talk as it boots. This is much more useable and useful for non visual use than a system that only finds its voice once it has been successfully started and has then loaded the appropriate speech application software. Practically, this means the kernel must interface with some canonical or idealised generic speech device, the simpler the better. This means deciding how phonetic intonation strings should be written...
It *could* be -- it depends on the social milieu, for example, on the laws of the market. Look, the GPL makes exactly this sort of thing possible for code. It just so happens that the "default" position with the USA laws that affect this market is hostile to GPL-like ideas, so these have to be explicitly crafted.
But the default position on copyright could, quite legitimately under the Constitution, be legislated to be much more in accordance with GPL-like ideas. If that were the case, then, yes, it would be "ok to just take a contemporary musician's CD, copy it, and sell it comercially, without their consent".
The law can give that consent, under the US Constitution. Should the laws be changed in that way? Yes, I think so -- it is be better for our culture as a whole if the default position was that creative work be freely shared, and the real authors properly recognised.
Well over a billion people speak English. Sure, around a quarter of them live in the US, but that still means most do not.
Even so, I kinda agree with what you say, that the site is close to misrepresenting itself. But the greater dishonesty is surely that the bloody thing is just grandstanding with public data -- it's almost useless, presumably by design, for practical purposes. So, yes, I too would rather the authors had been clear about their American background.
Here's some stats...
English has official or special status in at least seventy five countries with a total population of over two billion
English is spoken as a first language by around 375 million and as a second language by around 375 million speakers in the world
speakers of English as a second language probably outnumber those who speak it as a first language
around 750 million people are believed to speak English as a foreign language
one out of four of the world's population speak English to some level of competence; demand from the other three-quarters is increasing.
It looks to me as if the sums work like this:
375m (1st language)
375m (2nd language)
750m (learned English as a foreign language)
-----
1500m
Here's what Mr Viega said in his original article... Open source software projects can be more secure than closed source projects
The single most pernicious problem in computer security today is the buffer overflow... the availability of source code has clearly reduced the number of buffer overflow problems in open source programs
So open source *can* be more secure, because of the availability of the source code. Just like ESR says. What's the story, again?
You're missing the point, perhaps just to be a smart arse, or perhaps to show off your ignorance. Doesn't matter much which, but just to clear up your FUD for other folk...
Yes, you can try Linux by running it from a bootable Knoppix CD. And it won't touch any damn thing on your hard disk at all. Your system will be completely unaffected by the experience. Not even a single bit on the hard disk need change.
Then, if you like it, you can get into things a little further, by for example, creating a special file on your hard disk to hold your home directory and settings.
And if you *really* like it (you should try it, I think you would like it) then... wait for it... drumroll... it can be installed to the hard disk just like any other Linux distro. I guess you didn't know that.
Take a look at WinFS Vs GNOME Storage? Can you Say OS/400?. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:... it's worth bearing in mind that "Database Filesystems" are not a new idea - in fact, they've been in widespread use for many years. For a prime example, one need look no further than to IBM - their OS/400 operating system, which runs on the iSeries (previously known as the AS/400) minicomputers, features what can best be described as a "DB2 filesystem".
Slashdot Mirror
That's what you get for being so damn selfish.
If you'd mentioned you could keep going for an hour or two, she might have been more interested.
Oh, really? Perhaps it is you that is barely above being a trollish shill. But let Slashdot readers decide for themselves. "How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved" is a very worthwhile article about IP and the music business. Have a read. It's hardly tabloid material.
Or if exposing the stupidity of the music industry attitudes towards copyright and the internet is not enough, how about the Register's expose of Microsoft's misleading security claims. Try this for sizeSecurity Report: Windows vs Linux
Anyone with half a brain can see this coverage is far superior to the usual shashdot fare.
Let's nail this one, right now. Just as a house or a car can be made to resist intruders (or positively invite them) so can a computer operating system.
It's *not* *just* a matter of popularity. Windows' susceptibility to malware is also a matter of, ahem, design. Part of Windows' "ease of use" is to positively invite programs on other machines to order *your* machine around. Worse, MS has made use of stuff internally in the OS which should be reserved for inter-machine communication. For example, unlike in Linux, RPC cannot be turned off in Windows.
Windows is vulnerable by design, folks. Mac and Linux are not. Get used to it.
I think I'd rather be able to *tell* the thieves how to decrypt the data in my absence, rather than have them lop bits off of me to achieve the same ends. YMMV :)
Hmmmm.
OK, so the Merc was worth USD 75,000 to the thieves, a little more than a laptop. But if a dead finger works, a plastic replica would work as well. Before using a system like this, it may be worth considering the value that the data on a laptop might have to unscrupulous rivals ...
Is it worth this kind of horror to protect the laptop itself? There are easier and better ways to protect *data*.
I'll let a USAian explain the importance of Locke to Americanism. Anyone for Jefferson?
Patents are to control the duplication, the manufacture, of physical machines of one sort or another. Copyright is to control the duplication, the copying, of expressions of one form or another.
Computer software is an effective expression for controlling the workings of a determinate engine. As expressions, programs are adequately protected by copyright.
One source of confusion is that special purpose circuitry can be patented. A circuit is a lump of matter, a body, a physical machine. It's not like most machines tho, as its design can also be realised in software, using a general purpose computer. But that's just the way it is with electronics. Some machines can be patented, but when those same machines are realised in software, the work needs to be protected by copyright instead.
It's the embodiment of an idea that can be patented, not the expression of an idea. Allowing that the expression of an idea may be patented, makes it possible to be sued for writing math or program code, or even thinking about it.
And that is a profound violation of the right to freedoms of thought and expression.
This from Friday's http://www.linuxbusinessnews.com/
To Our Valued Readers: (May 13, 2005) - Our syndication arrangement with LinuxGram has recently ended after ethical questions raised by our readers in one of the stories published in last week's issue. I agree with their view on this matter; therefore I pulled the article shortly after it was published earlier this week. I apologize to our readers, to the open source community, our LinuxWorld editors, and Ms. Pamela Jones for publishing the article.
Fuat Kircaali Publisher, SYS-CON Media
It's not funny -- it's just pathetic. As two people have pointed out (I'm the third) there is *NO* grammatical error in the quoted sentence. It is funny to sneer at others' correct grammar? I don't think so. Not even on Slashdot.
Please could you cite your source for this? I mean, I agree that there is a case to be made that any software offered for sale should "display its ingredients" as it were. One could argue that people and corporations should have a right to see what the software they need to run actually does.
But I'm not sure that RMS has specifically called for legislation on this. Can you help out with a reference to back up your claim, please?
Great article? I don't think so. It is pretty amazing that someone can write an article about software wars while ignoring licensing issues. Like software licenses don't matter in the slightest ...
...
Nor can one coherently argue that GNU/Linux attracts long-term Unix users (as the author does when he predicts Sun's demise at the hands of GNU/Linux), and, at the same time argue that Linux will *promote* fragmentation. Either Linux is unifying the unix market, or it is fragmenting it. It can't be doing both
The article ignores the fact that the old Unix wars were between *secret-source* versions of Unix, that is, between *proprietory* code bases, backed by proprietory EULAs. There will not be "Linux" wars that mirror the old "Unix" wars just because of the GPL. No Linux distributor can break another's software. Any "better" version of GNU/Linux can be studied and copied, and the improvements rolled up by any other distributor of GNU/Linux.
The GPL is what makes Linux different from the old unices. It is why GNU/Linux has already reversed the splintering and fragmentation of the unices; and why we see it continues to convert users of proprietary systems (unix or otherwise).
You have just given us your conclusions, without showing your reasoning.
I *own* a music track I purchase in exactly the same why I *own* a book. I don't care if some idiot has put guff on the cover of the book saying I cannot make an audio copy of it, or scan it to my PC and have some voice synth program read the OCR'd text. I don't care, because I do *not* have a contract with the publisher. I've just bought their goods, that's all. I've bought their goods in a public market, made possible by a public commercial code, and public enforcement mechanisms. And I'll do as I please with my own property, because those public enforcement mechanisms -- in particular, juries -- will support my fair use.
Of course, I have not bought the copyright. But that does not mean that my culture and legal system has to give any credence at all to any so-called "End User Agreement" that prevents my personal enjoyment of my own property.
In short, I defy a jury to convict me if I copy my own book to my own PC for my own use. Or a picture; or video.
In England, no one ever bothered to bring suit against any consumer who has made a tape cassette copy of an LP. No-one has bothered because no jury would convict. Digital media are no different in that regard. We will make *personal* use our *own* personal property as we see fit.
Juries do not have to collude in dening personal property rights. In England at least, they can just refuse to convict.
"If we don't play god... who will?"
P: The alternative, of course, is to have seperate HTML rendering components for every application that wishes to render HTML.
Dunno why this scored three -- the grandparent is right, and the parent is wrong. So the (only?!) alternative is to have separate html rendering components for every application that wished to render html, is it? Why so? I think we should be told!
All that's needed is for the html rendering to run is userspace, rather than kernel space. That is actually what khtml does, which yes, is integrated tightly with the KDE graphical shell, but not with the kernel.
Fixing a bug in IE can mean fixing a bug in kernel code -- and that bug in the kernel code might affect dozens of other applications. You don't have to build things that way. That was the grandparent's point.
If you don't want OO, there's nothing to stop you from using an OO language like Python in the traditional procedural way.
Actually, I'd argue that's the "right" way to code some problems. I'm thinking particularly of the read-a-record; process it; write a record kind of processing that lies at the heart of much business computing. But that model of processing sucks badly when you try to write interactive applications. It's *much* easier to model or describe an interactive system in OO.
It's not so much that *everything* has to be OO. It's more that Python and the ilk have the advantages of OO available if needed.
name an open source application ... who are moving into the anti-virus market?
Oh, you haven't heard?
Try Clam anti-virus at http://www.clamav.net/
It is of course in everyone's direct interests to support an open, free global anti-virus network like Clam, rather than pay for secret source snake oil that does you-know-not-what.
it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of [believes] the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty ... (it is immoral to assert) that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence.
Simple, huh? Religion is not only bunk -- it is immoral and harmful bunk. It is the duty of moral and honest people to oppose it, and debunk it.
I'd say if those who have moral reasons are also democrats (!), then they can abide by the democratic results.
As for those who have religious reasons -- what concern is that of the state? The USA is not a country that can inflict sharia, or any other religiously motivated laws, on its people.
Where's you from, bud?
Quite a while back, I wrote a piece called The Talking Penguin", which I think might do what you ask. It starts ...
There is nothing inherently visual about computing. Digital processors read their instructions from files or streams of binary text. They report back to the outside world in the same telegraphic language, translated into character sets and painted onto a matrix of glowing (or light absorbing) pixels. The video graphics array, who needs it? Talking Tux needs the phonetic intonation string, then these missives could as easily be spoken.
Most developers expect to read the results of their efforts off of a screen; and the core of the system expects to issue streams of text that are displayed and not spoken. That is, the kernel is written to interface with hardware that writes, not hardware that speaks.
Interfaces on the kernel need to be handled with care. Linus Thorvald's paper in Linux World is worth reading in this context. The objection to extra interfaces on the kernel is that they are "fixed in stone". Once defined, interfaces must be preserved through all future releases of the kernel - or the new release will break existing code based on the old interface definition.
A talking kernel (strictly, a speech interface on the kernel) gives a system that can talk as it boots. This is much more useable and useful for non visual use than a system that only finds its voice once it has been successfully started and has then loaded the appropriate speech application software. Practically, this means the kernel must interface with some canonical or idealised generic speech device, the simpler the better. This means deciding how phonetic intonation strings should be written ...
It *could* be -- it depends on the social milieu, for example, on the laws of the market. Look, the GPL makes exactly this sort of thing possible for code. It just so happens that the "default" position with the USA laws that affect this market is hostile to GPL-like ideas, so these have to be explicitly crafted.
But the default position on copyright could, quite legitimately under the Constitution, be legislated to be much more in accordance with GPL-like ideas. If that were the case, then, yes, it would be "ok to just take a contemporary musician's CD, copy it, and sell it comercially, without their consent".
The law can give that consent, under the US Constitution. Should the laws be changed in that way? Yes, I think so -- it is be better for our culture as a whole if the default position was that creative work be freely shared, and the real authors properly recognised.
Even so, I kinda agree with what you say, that the site is close to misrepresenting itself. But the greater dishonesty is surely that the bloody thing is just grandstanding with public data -- it's almost useless, presumably by design, for practical purposes. So, yes, I too would rather the authors had been clear about their American background.
Here's some stats ...
It looks to me as if the sums work like this:
375m (1st language)
375m (2nd language)
750m (learned English as a foreign language)
-----
1500m
http://www.britishcouncil.org/english/engfaqs.htm
The single most pernicious problem in computer security today is the buffer overflow ... the availability of source code has clearly reduced the number of buffer overflow problems in open source programs
So open source *can* be more secure, because of the availability of the source code. Just like ESR says. What's the story, again?
You're missing the point, perhaps just to be a smart arse, or perhaps to show off your ignorance. Doesn't matter much which, but just to clear up your FUD for other folk ...
... wait for it ... drumroll ... it can be installed to the hard disk just like any other Linux distro. I guess you didn't know that.
Yes, you can try Linux by running it from a bootable Knoppix CD. And it won't touch any damn thing on your hard disk at all. Your system will be completely unaffected by the experience. Not even a single bit on the hard disk need change.
Then, if you like it, you can get into things a little further, by for example, creating a special file on your hard disk to hold your home directory and settings.
And if you *really* like it (you should try it, I think you would like it) then
Check what IBM say about Knoppix.
there is no existing implementation to copy
... it's worth bearing in mind that "Database Filesystems" are not a new idea - in fact, they've been in widespread use for many years. For a prime example, one need look no further than to IBM - their OS/400 operating system, which runs on the iSeries (previously known as the AS/400) minicomputers, features what can best be described as a "DB2 filesystem".
Take a look at WinFS Vs GNOME Storage? Can you Say OS/400?. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite: