Wow, your Microsoft sponsored brain cells must have worked overtime to think up that post.
You'd have to be pretty damn clueless to suggest that someone would come into a forum wtih this topic, announce by their own free will they work for microsoft, and not be sincere.
Perhaps you are looking for the poster who was talking about that beachfront property in nevada....
It didn't bring down the server. The companies made the operating decision to bring down the server because that is far easier than telling 10Kpeople not to open attachments to their e-mail. Have you ever tried to tell everyone in a corporation the same thing at the same time while using terminology that most do not understand? ("What's an attachment? What's he talking about?")
I'm sorry, that's a very poor excuse. Either MS's software should have a option to be able to keep these things from happening, or the users of these systems should be educated in these things.
It's no different than the idiot who wires up a chain of servers to a light switch, forgets to label it, and the janitor comes in and takes the servers down for a few hours.
Either there should be a method to disable these macros, or the admins at these systems should be processing all incoming/outgoing anything with something to remove the attachments (procmail does this I believe).
Ignorance is only an excuse for children and alzheimers patients.
Given the type of crowd that festers around Raster's proclaimations of disgruntledness, I think it's best for all of us to just carry on and ignore them. I think it's clear to most of us that these people a have nothing to offer us, and that nothing we say can make them stop whining.
I love this... "Type" of crowd.
Yet the same person who does this is probably whining and bitching when someone typecasts the linux community as a whole.
I've talked to the crowd that hangs out in #e, which I what I imagine you refer to. If "type" means anything that is applicable to these people, I would say that they are linux users, as there's not much more you can add to typecast such a large group.
Granted, I agree with a lot of people and think that he's whining, as this kind of shit happens whenever you leave any job. You find out who were your friends while you were working there, and those other people that were pretending to be your friends.
As for RedHat, I think that raster is making a good point, if not directly. His point is that within a good portion of the linux community, he is an icon. In a lot of ways, he embodies the more rebellious strain of hacker culture.
I think in a lot of ways, RedHat used raster more as a celebrity than a programmer, to attract attention to RHAD labs and GNOME. Once the attraction was not needed anymore, they found a way to get him to remove himself.
After all, if raster was fired from redhat, wouldn't we have a shitload of messages here about how everyone thinks redhat doesn't support programmers and free software?:)
I'm not saying RedHat is evil, I'm just saying that they are trying to seperate themselves from the culture. They want to make money, not friends anymore, as they have enough friends. You know, friends like Intel, HP... You get the idea.
Not all of the articles posted on Slashdot are specifically about Linux, and most of them have at least some relevance to my life. I don't read everything, just the stuff I'm interested in. I usually read stuff relating to Microsoft, because I like to see people complain about it.
Sorry about taking so long to reply to this.
I should have written that better. What I was saying, is that I don't comprehend why someone comes here, when the obvious slant to the articles here (especailyl ones like this) are the slant of a microsoft hating linux user?
Try reading everything with an open, unbiased mind, and you'd be amazed how much crap gets posted.
That's what spawned the last post.:) The original poster has just as much of a bias as the linux user, but the difference is, that his bias is more or less flamebait in this forum.
And I'm a philosophy and CS double major... Open minded discussion is what i've been cramming for the last week.:)
It's hilarious, the trend is the same, but the sides are different. People here are disgustingly anti-popular thought, to the point where if the masses subscribe to a particular viewpoint, there has to be someone who has to break the mold strictly on the basis that the masses hold the exact opposite viewpoint. This trend increases until the opposite thought becomes the masses, and the cycle starts all over again.
I find ex-linux user friends of mine doing the same thing, because in they're crowd, they are again the minority, and being the minority seems to be the only way boring geeks like us seem to stand out.
NT sucks. That's my opinion. I don't want to force it on anyone, and I don't see a need to justify it either. I dislike microsoft because of their shady business practices.
Oh, and not to be picky, but address that you have listed as your homepage is down. Perhaps a different web server (or OS) would help (heh heh)
No hehe, I just changed schools, and I've been too lazy to change it.:)
You cannot justify breaking a law. Breaking into someone's system is a computer crime. If you think the law is unjust, _CHANGE_ it. Isn't that what's so great about America? We have freedoms, that includes the freedom to change an unjust law. The problem is it won't get changed.. Because it would open a million loop holes for script kiddies.
Justifying breaking a law is just as complex as justifying creating the law in the first place.
Law is applied and enforced opinion. Nothing more.
It comes down to this: if you are going to break the law, are you going to do it for ethical, or unethical reasons. If ethical, what is your motivation for calling said action ethical?
If you can do that, then by all means break every law you can apply it to.
"Hackers solve problems, crackers create them"
Crackers find problems, not create them. Someone has to have a hole in their code so that a cracker can exploit it. If you want to get really technical, the hackers themselves create the same problems they fix.
So many people seem to think that getting root on someone else's computer just to "explore the system" or "gain information" or "gain expirience/education) is OK. There's no harm done in exploring the system, but if you want to do that, ask the sys admin nicely. If he still doesn't let you then too bad. Explore your own system.
While this was not the case 10 years ago, I agree, in today's technological society cracking root on another system is not really needed to learn about a system.
But it should also be noted that a lot of older sysadmins would be making hamburgers at McDonalds if they didn't do just that. College isn't for everyone, some people actually enjoy learning by example and creating their own solutions, instead of doing what professor joe tells you is correct.
And before I conclude, it should be noted that no duty to privacy will ever conquer the curious mind.:) Hackers are curious computer enthusiasts. Nothing more, nothing less. They enjoy finding out the hard way, instead of being told that's the way things are.
After all, wasn't it curiosity and a drive to investigate that turned you on to Linux? (if you are a linux user)
At least there's one other clear-headed individual around here. I refuse to subscribe to the pro-Linux propaganda just because Microsoft is a huge company.
I'm sorry, not trying to flame here... But then why are you here at all?
I mean, the site says, news for nerds, but this is obviously a very anti-windows, pro-unix and free software site. In what way would you benefit from reading this site at all unless it involved flaming the zealots?
And you know what I think is hilarious? I think in a lot of ways, the posts have gotten quite a bit more mature from what they were a year ago, especially during all of the KDE/GNOME crap.
A lot of people are working harder out there to create more informative and useful postings, and I honestly can't see how anyone could complain too much, when all they have to do is adjust the threshold to a higher number... No moderator is perfect, but you're going to seriously raise the signal to noise ratio by setting it to 2 or 3 if the topic is sensetive.
I personally find the comparing and contrasting of the cracker and hacker communities to be an interesting passtime. They both thrive in the same environment (the Internet) and are often motivated by the same things (status among peers, the desire to solve challenging puzzles), but there are also some fundimental differences.
Here in Portland, OR (Home of the Amazing Tonya Harding),a local pizza joint, Stark Street Pizza, uses what I think is an old Radio Shack Color Computer (anybody from Portland correct me if I'm wrong, please) to flash customer numbers on a little 13" tv. Whatever it is, I know it is old. The Church of Elvis used to have a C-64 running a fortune-telling (I think) program in the storefront window
Hmm... I'll have to check that out sometime when I'm bored... been a while since I've seen a CoCo in action.
What'd be really nice, is if someone turns up a machine that still runs ITS..:)
I'm not sure if this is what you were referring to, but Amstrad released a 386/Mega Drive machine a few years back...it was a decent spec box for the time; only problem was, due to the proprietary nature of the machine there was practically no upgrade options whatsoever...
I saw a similar thing with the 3DO as well, I believe they had a card of some sort to process the instructions...
I never owned one myself but I remember seeing advertisements for it heh.. 3do's never looked very interesting.:)
AMEN! Preach on, brother! Yet another reason that open-source software is so significantly better than closed-source garbage. Linux for Sparc architecture is extremely solid and runs every open-source item that I want... Yet, if I want to run Civ CTP on my sparcstation, I cannot and probably never will be able to. Too bad there is no emulator... Wait a second!!! have you heard of SoftWindows? or SoftPC? What it is is a Intel box emulator... it is available for mac and solaris and probably several other OSes. It allows you to run Windows on a Sparc... Maybe what we need is FREE-PC or FREE-WINDOWS... so we can emulate a Intel box to run Linux in a window.
Some people are working on this as we speak... Don't want to name any names yet, (cause there's no code AFAIK) but this was something I caught on a mailing list a few days ago, and the people working on it are very credible.
I don't know if this works on other platforms, but have you looked at BOCHS? I don't have the URL handy, but you should be able to find it on freshmeat.. It provides full x86 machine emulation, possibly allowing you to do something like that.
We have 6 candidates How about giving each 16,66667 % of the vote. Better than apathy and it sends a message to them.
Vote NONE OF THE ABOVE.
Law requires that if a candidate is not within a majority of 1/ of the vote, that all candidates will not be allowed to participate in a new election.
So, hence, vote NONE OF THE ABOVE if you do not like exactly what you are getting now. Keep doing it until you get someone you like... More people should do this, it's not throwing your vote away if you can get the majority to understand what it means.
And this goes for representatives and senators also. Remember that the electoral college is a good portion of the vote as well, so don't bother voting for a democrat president and a republican representative/senator, as half (i think half, someone correct me here if not) of your vote contradicts the other.
Personally I won't vote for any political seats until I move of of this shit-for-nothing country as no matter how I vote I get screwed in the ass by someone who sees their back pocket as a more important issue than the people. Even nowadays when you vote on laws the govt doesn't agree with they try to repeal them. (See oregon and medicinal marijuana, the state legislature is still trying to repeal it, even though it passed with overwhelming majority)
This idea isn't new. The Scientologists forced the original Cult Awareness Network to fold, via specious litigation (Scientology doesn't care about winning lawsuits, they just want to bankrupt their opponents), and then set up camp themselves as the Cult Awareness Network. So now, if you try to get information about cults via the CAN, you're actually getting information from a cult.
You know what the funniest thing is? Go to dict.org and lookup the word "cult". "Religion" is listed as a synonym. Yes, that includes, but is not limited to: Christianity, Islam, Buddism, Rastafarianism, among many others.
Any religiously-educated human being would know this. IIRC, the original (archaic) definition of cult was "a religion that's teaching revolves around one being" (or something close).
I'm sure it goes without saying that the original group was religious as well, I'm not going to say what religion, but it should be obvious to most. The large cult gets trounced by a smaller cult that got slammed by the large cult. Serves the large cult right.
I'm no scientologist either, but it disgusts me to find groups out there devotes their time to promoting their ideals through their own hypocracy and bashing others.
-Erik-
Re:The odds of caring about H. Stern's review...
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What do you mean, you don't think Hamill has talent? He's great as the Joker on Batman:TAS...
Hehe, I should have clarified... He is a rather talented voice actor, but his appearance in Wing Commander III was probably the hardest (visual) acting he's done in a while, and for good reason.
Although Micro$oft may have had nothing to do with who received the award, RMS might care that he was taking money from them. But I'm not sure if he's that kind of guy...that's why I asked
See, that's the point missed. RMS didn't take the money from microsoft, he took it from the institution giving the award. Microsoft gave the money to the institution, nothing more.
The money that RMS recieves will either benefit himself or the FSF, more than likely both.
I doubt that either Sun's or Microsoft's money would ever willingly go to the FSF, since they do deny everything both of those companies are standing for.
If I read an article saying "RMS recieves $10k check from Microsoft", then, I would completely agree with you - he did recieve money directly from someone who denies the views that lead to the money he recieved. But this is not the case, as Microsoft nor Sun had any choice in who recieved the award, because we'd be seeing a Scott or a Bill this year instead of a Richard recieving the award.
If the KKK were contributing money to an award for excellence in the persuit of personal freedom and I were to win an award for it (being very anti-KKK), I wouldn't care. They supported the ideals of the award, not the person recieving it. There is a large difference here I think you're missing.
And if you want me to read your mind less consider thinking more about inferences you might create and justify.
-Erik-
Re:Who are you to tell me what license I should us
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You are seriously missing the point - in fact, you miss the point so far you contradict yourself in your own post:
Not all "proprietary" software is *evil*, horrible, deadly to innovation. In fact, I'd hate to trust the defibrillator above or an aircraft tower control system to an OpenSource community. "Oh yeah, I just whipped up a patch for that bug.. works on my machine fine!" (oops, how many lives depend on your machine?). Would you be glad if your bank was keeping all of its account information on MSQL?
If your bank, airport, or hospital uses unchecked code written by a back-alley hacker, I pity your poor choice in service.
You won't find many (smart) professional outfits running Oracle modified by the backalley hacker either. The whole reason a person uses a brand name program is because of the confidence they have in the authors and the source that they generate.
Now, if the code to that air traffic controller software or defibrilator was open, the hospital or airport could hire knowledged, professional programmers to scour the code for possible bugs. This is something that I think both you and I would *WANT*... Do I need to cite the Navy and NT? I imagine if NT was Open Source, the navy would probably be recruiting more programmer to debug and solidify the code, heaven forbid actually modifying the code to specifically fit their needs.
And if oracle were to release the source of their database suite, don't you think the next time they had a job opening they could require prior knowledge of the Oracle source for employment? Great boon for oracle if you ask me, after all, they're still going to get people to pay for their software.
All in all, a situation that you describe would more than not create more jobs, or at least, require that people looking for programming jobs have prior experience in the software they're going to be working on.
If I am unwilling or unable to change my license to GPL, then I can't use your code, and your so-called "free" GPL code is not so "free", is it?
You could always pay for it or write it yourself. Heaven forbid you respect the terms that the author of the code releases it under.
-Erik-
Re:About some things commented on here...
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This argument is not, that is it doesn't exist.
The fact is, if you write code and want someone else's code, you have to get permission from the author. This has nothing to do with the GPL - if this were proprietary code that you stumbled on would you be facing the same dilemma? I'd bet you would.
The fact is, the only time that you wouldn't have to make this choice is under a Public Domain or BSD-style license. No other license in the world would let you use code without the author's permission for any purpose other than released source. (I believe MPL, APSL, and even the jikes license all have these provisions as well)
And remember, if you've ever gotten angry with a policeman, one of the first things they'll tell you when you start calling them names is that you have the right to free speech, but not without it's consequences. eg: Free speech entitles you to call your boss an asshole but doesn't protect you from getting fired.
I think it is important that you (and others) learn to differentiate between communism as a political theory (or society's final stage in Marxist theory), where property is owned "in common" and available when you need it, and Communism as a doctrine where a single party controls a totalitarian government and production is government-controlled.
I think you're over-interpreting the GPL, and listening too much to Dr. Who (the writer of the article involving this).
The the only thing that the GPL implies, is that the source code is a "gift" to other developers. This is no different than BSD or PD, except for the requirement that if other developers contribute to that "gift", then they must release the fruits of their labor also.
But people seem to forget the fact that the developer chooses to put their code under this license. Any developer who spends a significant amount of time, and then puts his/her code under a license that doesn't reflect the intentions of the author is proverbially shooting themselves in the foot. IIRC Marx either implied or stated that ALL people would give the "gift" willingly, which, if that were the case, there would be no reason for a GPL.
Quick general commentary: The point is, GPL'd code is a small fragment of the codebase that's out there (if you count in house copyrighted code), so, if it bothers you, please, use other free licensed code, or stick with your binaries. No one cares what you run on your own system, FSF developers and GPL'd code developers are still going to write their code whether or not you like the political influence of a 40-someodd year old man.
As for Dr. Who's comment, I found it funny how he almost seemed violated by the fact that someone came up with an idea that lets authors protect their code and keep it free at the same time. I wrote him a rather large (polite) letter pointing out TONS of holes in his interpretation of the GPL, and pointed out the fact in the paragraph above. I have yet to recieve a reply... I figure either he couldn't come up with a reply of factual merit or he couldn't come up with a reply that didn't look like it came from a 12 year old's mouth.
When the numbers first came out the response was "Tell me it isn't true--the Linux box must have been misconfigured. Geez, MTUGIBS was set to 30 rather than 42. How could Linux possibly compare under those conditions?"
So, going with your argument, if someone created an loaded benchmark that favored linux instead of NT, Microsoft should not get angry that someone distorted the power of their OS?
As much as I detest M$, I would never wish for that fate, as I would much rather see them lose without argument.
Most people complained at the SAMBA benchmarks, (and I am not familiar with SAMBA) which was configured AGAINST the known recommended procedures listed in the documentation (someone fill in here, the widelinks=no thing)..
If you ask me, that either proves that Mindcraft made no effort to configure the linux box, or that the results were manipulated intentionally. From the outcry of SAMBA admins here on slashdot it would also suggest that this wasn't some simple "mistake".
Personally, if they're going to do SMB evaluations, it would probably be best that Jeremy Allison (writer of SAMBA) admin the box. If TCP/IP, possibly Linus or whoever writes the bulk of the TCP/IP code in the kernel. If Apache, then the apache coders. After all, if Microsoft is getting their hands dirty and configuring these boxes themselves, why not the original authors of the software?
Also, I thought it was illegal to post software benchmarks about a Microsoft product, as described in their EULA...
Has RMS ever indicated that he would have a problem taking money from an institution he has some fundamental problems with?
Err, I don't think RMS has any problems taking money from a reputable award institution that decides he is deservant of the award.
In fact, it would be insane to suggest that anyone would.
Oh, did you mean Microsoft?:) AFAIK, the companies who donate money to these awards have nothing to do with them. The fact that Microsoft donated is either through philantropy (which I don't doubt, I don't think Gates is satan, just an idiot that uses money as a defense mechanism) or self-promotion (not unfeasible either).
IOW, You're reading into this too much.
-Erik-
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..are about the same as the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field.:) After all, the man gets impressed by a skank throating a 3-foot kielbasa, and compares penis sizes on the air.
Yeah, heaven forbid he might have an opinion that has nothing to do with the antics on his show.
I find it hilarious, I was talking to a friend of mine who was reading an article about people who paid $500 to see the movie in advance, and THEY thought it sucked. (read: people who pay $500 to see a movie 2 weeks in advance are either big fans or fucking idiots) My friend brought out a rather interesting quote from the story too: "This movie is great if you're 12 years old"....
Heresay at least from my viewpoint, but I'd consider the guy to be at least reputable in quoting news stories. I really can't wait until I see 500 slashdot comments, 90% of them saying "it sucked, I was so disappointed."
The more disgusting fact is that most of the Star Wars freaks that I know wouldn't admit something like that if they were threatened with death... You know, the same people who still think Mark Hamill (sp?) has acting talent.:)
I have dabbled with the FrontPage extensions, and I must say that I have never seen a more horrid hack. Not only are the insecure, but just not implimented well. A good idea that went VERY wrong.
Hehe, that's hilarious.... A job I had a while back had 4 MC*'s (2 MCSE, 2 MCP) and none of them would allow either IIS/NT serving, or Frontpage extensions on the Linux servers, but they'd plug M$ whereever they would go....
Doesn't Netscape Composer pretty much let you do this? It's got a WYSIWYG editor, and then you click on the publish button, which from there you would put in ftp://ftp.mydomain.com/home/users/username/public_ html (or whatever directory you've set up), then put in your username and password, and it will upload the page, and all the associated files. Is that pretty much what you are looking for?
I was thinking the same thing, most WYSWYG editors do that, including Frontpage, and Dreamweaver (personal favorite because the source generated is actually readable).
I understand that people should be able to publish their ideas freely, but they had to learn to read before they could write, why shouldn't they have to learn how simple things like this work before they can publish their ideas?
Frankly, I'm getting rather tired with the commoditizing of, what 10 years ago, was either a hobby, or a profession. Frankly, I find it disgusting that as of late jsut about anyone with not a single iota of background can walk in and demand, that something that others spend years working with to learn fix or make easier for them.
At least you have to take a common sense test before they give you a drivers license.
The way I see it, all of the hacks doing GPL stuff can stick to their hobby and try to eek out a living on their chosen philosophy and lifestyle, and the real software engineers, meaning the people who take time to design specifications, implementation plans, work with management, through to implementation, can do the real nasty work that needs to get done in the world, and get paid for it.
Err, I can't decipher if this is a flame or if you're actually serious. There is a quite a bit of scientific software out there under GPL, by very real software engineers. Just look at the debian package listing for an example. I don't think that I need to cite the fact that a good deal of specifications are at least influenced by free code, if not completely designed under it.
I don't think certification has anything to do with hobby programming, or programming on a free basis. No one requires that a doctor or lawyer practices for money, just that they do it to a certification that is deemed CORRECT.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, your Microsoft sponsored brain cells must have worked overtime to think up that post.
You'd have to be pretty damn clueless to suggest that someone would come into a forum wtih this topic, announce by their own free will they work for microsoft, and not be sincere.
Perhaps you are looking for the poster who was talking about that beachfront property in nevada....
-Erik "Chronic Caffiene Deficiency" Hollensbe-
It didn't bring down the server. The companies made the operating decision to bring down the server because that is far easier than telling 10Kpeople not to open attachments to their e-mail. Have you ever tried to tell everyone in a corporation the same thing at the same time while using terminology that most do not understand? ("What's an attachment? What's he talking about?")
I'm sorry, that's a very poor excuse. Either MS's software should have a option to be able to keep these things from happening, or the users of these systems should be educated in these things.
It's no different than the idiot who wires up a chain of servers to a light switch, forgets to label it, and the janitor comes in and takes the servers down for a few hours.
Either there should be a method to disable these macros, or the admins at these systems should be processing all incoming/outgoing anything with something to remove the attachments (procmail does this I believe).
Ignorance is only an excuse for children and alzheimers patients.
-Erik-
On the other hand, 100 - 99.9 is not 0.001.
.999 .999 = .001
Ok, lets go back to pre-algebra for a minute.
100% = 1
99.99 =
1 -
-Erik-
Given the type of crowd that festers around Raster's proclaimations of disgruntledness, I think it's best for all of us to just carry on and ignore them. I think it's clear to most of us that these people a have nothing to offer us, and that nothing we say can make them stop whining.
:)
I love this... "Type" of crowd.
Yet the same person who does this is probably whining and bitching when someone typecasts the linux community as a whole.
I've talked to the crowd that hangs out in #e, which I what I imagine you refer to. If "type" means anything that is applicable to these people, I would say that they are linux users, as there's not much more you can add to typecast such a large group.
Granted, I agree with a lot of people and think that he's whining, as this kind of shit happens whenever you leave any job. You find out who were your friends while you were working there, and those other people that were pretending to be your friends.
As for RedHat, I think that raster is making a good point, if not directly. His point is that within a good portion of the linux community, he is an icon. In a lot of ways, he embodies the more rebellious strain of hacker culture.
I think in a lot of ways, RedHat used raster more as a celebrity than a programmer, to attract attention to RHAD labs and GNOME. Once the attraction was not needed anymore, they found a way to get him to remove himself.
After all, if raster was fired from redhat, wouldn't we have a shitload of messages here about how everyone thinks redhat doesn't support programmers and free software?
I'm not saying RedHat is evil, I'm just saying that they are trying to seperate themselves from the culture. They want to make money, not friends anymore, as they have enough friends. You know, friends like Intel, HP... You get the idea.
-Erik-
Not all of the articles posted on Slashdot are specifically about Linux, and most of them have at least some relevance to my life. I don't read everything, just the stuff I'm interested in. I usually read stuff relating to Microsoft, because I like to see people complain about it.
:) The original poster has just as much of a bias as the linux user, but the difference is, that his bias is more or less flamebait in this forum.
:)
:)
Sorry about taking so long to reply to this.
I should have written that better. What I was saying, is that I don't comprehend why someone comes here, when the obvious slant to the articles here (especailyl ones like this) are the slant of a microsoft hating linux user?
Try reading everything with an open, unbiased mind, and you'd be amazed how much crap gets posted.
That's what spawned the last post.
And I'm a philosophy and CS double major... Open minded discussion is what i've been cramming for the last week.
It's hilarious, the trend is the same, but the sides are different. People here are disgustingly anti-popular thought, to the point where if the masses subscribe to a particular viewpoint, there has to be someone who has to break the mold strictly on the basis that the masses hold the exact opposite viewpoint. This trend increases until the opposite thought becomes the masses, and the cycle starts all over again.
I find ex-linux user friends of mine doing the same thing, because in they're crowd, they are again the minority, and being the minority seems to be the only way boring geeks like us seem to stand out.
NT sucks. That's my opinion. I don't want to force it on anyone, and I don't see a need to justify it either. I dislike microsoft because of their shady business practices.
Oh, and not to be picky, but address that you have listed as your homepage is down. Perhaps a different web server (or OS) would help (heh heh)
No hehe, I just changed schools, and I've been too lazy to change it.
-Erik-
You cannot justify breaking a law. Breaking into someone's system is a computer crime. If you think the law is unjust, _CHANGE_ it. Isn't that what's so great about America? We have freedoms, that includes the freedom to change an unjust law. The problem is it won't get changed.. Because it would open a million loop holes for script kiddies.
:) Hackers are curious computer enthusiasts. Nothing more, nothing less. They enjoy finding out the hard way, instead of being told that's the way things are.
Justifying breaking a law is just as complex as justifying creating the law in the first place.
Law is applied and enforced opinion. Nothing more.
It comes down to this: if you are going to break the law, are you going to do it for ethical, or unethical reasons. If ethical, what is your motivation for calling said action ethical?
If you can do that, then by all means break every law you can apply it to.
"Hackers solve problems, crackers create them"
Crackers find problems, not create them. Someone has to have a hole in their code so that a cracker can exploit it. If you want to get really technical, the hackers themselves create the same problems they fix.
So many people seem to think that getting root on someone else's computer just to "explore the system" or "gain information" or "gain expirience/education) is OK. There's no harm done in exploring the system, but if you want to do that, ask the sys admin nicely. If he still doesn't let you then too bad. Explore your own system.
While this was not the case 10 years ago, I agree, in today's technological society cracking root on another system is not really needed to learn about a system.
But it should also be noted that a lot of older sysadmins would be making hamburgers at McDonalds if they didn't do just that. College isn't for everyone, some people actually enjoy learning by example and creating their own solutions, instead of doing what professor joe tells you is correct.
And before I conclude, it should be noted that no duty to privacy will ever conquer the curious mind.
After all, wasn't it curiosity and a drive to investigate that turned you on to Linux? (if you are a linux user)
-Erik-
At least there's one other clear-headed individual around here. I refuse to subscribe to the pro-Linux propaganda just because Microsoft is a huge company.
I'm sorry, not trying to flame here... But then why are you here at all?
I mean, the site says, news for nerds, but this is obviously a very anti-windows, pro-unix and free software site. In what way would you benefit from reading this site at all unless it involved flaming the zealots?
And you know what I think is hilarious? I think in a lot of ways, the posts have gotten quite a bit more mature from what they were a year ago, especially during all of the KDE/GNOME crap.
A lot of people are working harder out there to create more informative and useful postings, and I honestly can't see how anyone could complain too much, when all they have to do is adjust the threshold to a higher number... No moderator is perfect, but you're going to seriously raise the signal to noise ratio by setting it to 2 or 3 if the topic is sensetive.
-Erik-
I personally find the comparing and contrasting of the cracker and hacker communities to be an interesting passtime. They both thrive in the same environment (the Internet) and are often motivated
by the same things (status among peers, the desire to solve challenging puzzles), but there are also some fundimental differences.
There's a very simple explanation for this:
About 10 years of age.
-Erik-
Here in Portland, OR (Home of the Amazing Tonya Harding),a local pizza joint, Stark Street Pizza,
:)
uses what I think is an old Radio Shack Color Computer (anybody from Portland correct me if I'm wrong, please) to flash customer numbers on a little 13" tv. Whatever it is, I know it is old. The Church of Elvis used to have a C-64 running a fortune-telling (I think) program in the storefront window
Hmm... I'll have to check that out sometime when I'm bored... been a while since I've seen a CoCo in action.
What'd be really nice, is if someone turns up a machine that still runs ITS..
-Erik-
I'm not sure if this is what you were referring to, but Amstrad released a 386/Mega Drive machine a few years back...it was a decent spec box for the time; only problem was, due to the proprietary nature of the machine there was practically no upgrade options whatsoever...
:)
I saw a similar thing with the 3DO as well, I believe they had a card of some sort to process the instructions...
I never owned one myself but I remember seeing advertisements for it heh.. 3do's never looked very interesting.
-Erik-
AMEN! Preach on, brother! Yet another reason that open-source software is so significantly better than closed-source garbage. Linux for Sparc architecture is extremely solid and runs every open-source item that I want... Yet, if I want to run Civ CTP on my sparcstation, I cannot and probably never will be able to. Too bad there is no emulator... Wait a second!!! have you heard of SoftWindows? or SoftPC? What it is is a Intel box emulator... it is available for mac and solaris and probably several other OSes. It allows you to run Windows on a Sparc... Maybe what we need is FREE-PC or FREE-WINDOWS... so we can emulate a Intel box to run Linux in a window.
Some people are working on this as we speak... Don't want to name any names yet, (cause there's no code AFAIK) but this was something I caught on a mailing list a few days ago, and the people working on it are very credible.
I don't know if this works on other platforms, but have you looked at BOCHS? I don't have the URL handy, but you should be able to find it on freshmeat.. It provides full x86 machine emulation, possibly allowing you to do something like that.
-Erik-
We have 6 candidates
How about giving each 16,66667 % of the vote. Better than apathy and it sends a message to them.
Vote NONE OF THE ABOVE.
Law requires that if a candidate is not within a majority of 1/ of the vote, that all candidates will not be allowed to participate in a new election.
So, hence, vote NONE OF THE ABOVE if you do not like exactly what you are getting now. Keep doing it until you get someone you like... More people should do this, it's not throwing your vote away if you can get the majority to understand what it means.
And this goes for representatives and senators also. Remember that the electoral college is a good portion of the vote as well, so don't bother voting for a democrat president and a republican representative/senator, as half (i think half, someone correct me here if not) of your vote contradicts the other.
Personally I won't vote for any political seats until I move of of this shit-for-nothing country as no matter how I vote I get screwed in the ass by someone who sees their back pocket as a more important issue than the people. Even nowadays when you vote on laws the govt doesn't agree with they try to repeal them. (See oregon and medicinal marijuana, the state legislature is still trying to repeal it, even though it passed with overwhelming majority)
I'm ranting - so what.
-Erik-
This idea isn't new. The Scientologists forced the original Cult Awareness Network to fold, via specious litigation (Scientology doesn't care about winning lawsuits, they just want to bankrupt their opponents), and then set up camp themselves as the Cult Awareness Network. So now, if you try to get information about cults via the CAN, you're actually getting information from a cult.
You know what the funniest thing is? Go to dict.org and lookup the word "cult". "Religion" is listed as a synonym. Yes, that includes, but is not limited to: Christianity, Islam, Buddism, Rastafarianism, among many others.
Any religiously-educated human being would know this. IIRC, the original (archaic) definition of cult was "a religion that's teaching revolves around one being" (or something close).
I'm sure it goes without saying that the original group was religious as well, I'm not going to say what religion, but it should be obvious to most. The large cult gets trounced by a smaller cult that got slammed by the large cult. Serves the large cult right.
I'm no scientologist either, but it disgusts me to find groups out there devotes their time to promoting their ideals through their own hypocracy and bashing others.
-Erik-
What do you mean, you don't think Hamill has talent? He's great as the Joker on Batman:TAS...
Hehe, I should have clarified... He is a rather talented voice actor, but his appearance in Wing Commander III was probably the hardest (visual) acting he's done in a while, and for good reason.
-Erik-
Although Micro$oft may have had nothing to do with who received the award, RMS might care that he was taking money from them. But I'm not sure if he's that kind of guy...that's why I asked
See, that's the point missed. RMS didn't take the money from microsoft, he took it from the institution giving the award. Microsoft gave the money to the institution, nothing more.
The money that RMS recieves will either benefit himself or the FSF, more than likely both.
I doubt that either Sun's or Microsoft's money would ever willingly go to the FSF, since they do deny everything both of those companies are standing for.
If I read an article saying "RMS recieves $10k check from Microsoft", then, I would completely agree with you - he did recieve money directly from someone who denies the views that lead to the money he recieved. But this is not the case, as Microsoft nor Sun had any choice in who recieved the award, because we'd be seeing a Scott or a Bill this year instead of a Richard recieving the award.
If the KKK were contributing money to an award for excellence in the persuit of personal freedom and I were to win an award for it (being very anti-KKK), I wouldn't care. They supported the ideals of the award, not the person recieving it. There is a large difference here I think you're missing.
And if you want me to read your mind less consider thinking more about inferences you might create and justify.
-Erik-
You are seriously missing the point - in fact, you miss the point so far you contradict yourself in your own post:
Not all "proprietary" software is *evil*, horrible, deadly to innovation. In fact, I'd hate to trust the defibrillator above or an aircraft tower control system to an OpenSource community. "Oh yeah, I just whipped up a patch for that bug.. works on my machine fine!" (oops, how many lives depend on your machine?). Would you be glad if your bank was keeping all of its account information on MSQL?
If your bank, airport, or hospital uses unchecked code written by a back-alley hacker, I pity your poor choice in service.
You won't find many (smart) professional outfits running Oracle modified by the backalley hacker either. The whole reason a person uses a brand name program is because of the confidence they have in the authors and the source that they generate.
Now, if the code to that air traffic controller software or defibrilator was open, the hospital or airport could hire knowledged, professional programmers to scour the code for possible bugs. This is something that I think both you and I would *WANT*... Do I need to cite the Navy and NT? I imagine if NT was Open Source, the navy would probably be recruiting more programmer to debug and solidify the code, heaven forbid actually modifying the code to specifically fit their needs.
And if oracle were to release the source of their database suite, don't you think the next time they had a job opening they could require prior knowledge of the Oracle source for employment? Great boon for oracle if you ask me, after all, they're still going to get people to pay for their software.
All in all, a situation that you describe would more than not create more jobs, or at least, require that people looking for programming jobs have prior experience in the software they're going to be working on.
Heaven forbid, we wouldn't want that.
-Erik-
If I am unwilling or unable to change my license to GPL, then I can't use your code, and your so-called "free" GPL code is not so "free", is it?
You could always pay for it or write it yourself. Heaven forbid you respect the terms that the author of the code releases it under.
-Erik-
This argument is not, that is it doesn't exist.
The fact is, if you write code and want someone else's code, you have to get permission from the author. This has nothing to do with the GPL - if this were proprietary code that you stumbled on would you be facing the same dilemma? I'd bet you would.
The fact is, the only time that you wouldn't have to make this choice is under a Public Domain or BSD-style license. No other license in the world would let you use code without the author's permission for any purpose other than released source. (I believe MPL, APSL, and even the jikes license all have these provisions as well)
And remember, if you've ever gotten angry with a policeman, one of the first things they'll tell you when you start calling them names is that you have the right to free speech, but not without it's consequences. eg: Free speech entitles you to call your boss an asshole but doesn't protect you from getting fired.
-Erik-
I think it is important that you (and others) learn to differentiate between communism as a political theory (or society's final stage in Marxist theory), where property is owned "in common" and available when you need it, and Communism as a doctrine where a single party controls a totalitarian government and production is government-controlled.
I think you're over-interpreting the GPL, and listening too much to Dr. Who (the writer of the article involving this).
The the only thing that the GPL implies, is that the source code is a "gift" to other developers. This is no different than BSD or PD, except for the requirement that if other developers contribute to that "gift", then they must release the fruits of their labor also.
But people seem to forget the fact that the developer chooses to put their code under this license. Any developer who spends a significant amount of time, and then puts his/her code under a license that doesn't reflect the intentions of the author is proverbially shooting themselves in the foot. IIRC Marx either implied or stated that ALL people would give the "gift" willingly, which, if that were the case, there would be no reason for a GPL.
Quick general commentary: The point is, GPL'd code is a small fragment of the codebase that's out there (if you count in house copyrighted code), so, if it bothers you, please, use other free licensed code, or stick with your binaries. No one cares what you run on your own system, FSF developers and GPL'd code developers are still going to write their code whether or not you like the political influence of a 40-someodd year old man.
As for Dr. Who's comment, I found it funny how he almost seemed violated by the fact that someone came up with an idea that lets authors protect their code and keep it free at the same time. I wrote him a rather large (polite) letter pointing out TONS of holes in his interpretation of the GPL, and pointed out the fact in the paragraph above. I have yet to recieve a reply... I figure either he couldn't come up with a reply of factual merit or he couldn't come up with a reply that didn't look like it came from a 12 year old's mouth.
In other words, GET OVER IT, IT'S NOT GOING AWAY.
(mmm.. sleep)
-Erik-
When the numbers first came out the response was "Tell me it isn't true--the Linux box must have been misconfigured. Geez, MTUGIBS was set to 30 rather than 42. How could Linux possibly compare under those conditions?"
So, going with your argument, if someone created an loaded benchmark that favored linux instead of NT, Microsoft should not get angry that someone distorted the power of their OS?
As much as I detest M$, I would never wish for that fate, as I would much rather see them lose without argument.
Most people complained at the SAMBA benchmarks, (and I am not familiar with SAMBA) which was configured AGAINST the known recommended procedures listed in the documentation (someone fill in here, the widelinks=no thing)..
If you ask me, that either proves that Mindcraft made no effort to configure the linux box, or that the results were manipulated intentionally. From the outcry of SAMBA admins here on slashdot it would also suggest that this wasn't some simple "mistake".
Personally, if they're going to do SMB evaluations, it would probably be best that Jeremy Allison (writer of SAMBA) admin the box. If TCP/IP, possibly Linus or whoever writes the bulk of the TCP/IP code in the kernel. If Apache, then the apache coders. After all, if Microsoft is getting their hands dirty and configuring these boxes themselves, why not the original authors of the software?
Also, I thought it was illegal to post software benchmarks about a Microsoft product, as described in their EULA...
-Erik-
Has RMS ever indicated that he would have a problem taking money from an institution he has some fundamental problems with?
:) AFAIK, the companies who donate money to these awards have nothing to do with them. The fact that Microsoft donated is either through philantropy (which I don't doubt, I don't think Gates is satan, just an idiot that uses money as a defense mechanism) or self-promotion (not unfeasible either).
Err, I don't think RMS has any problems taking money from a reputable award institution that decides he is deservant of the award.
In fact, it would be insane to suggest that anyone would.
Oh, did you mean Microsoft?
IOW, You're reading into this too much.
-Erik-
..are about the same as the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field. :)
:)
After all, the man gets impressed by a skank throating a 3-foot kielbasa, and compares penis sizes on the air.
Yeah, heaven forbid he might have an opinion that has nothing to do with the antics on his show.
I find it hilarious, I was talking to a friend of mine who was reading an article about people who paid $500 to see the movie in advance, and THEY thought it sucked. (read: people who pay $500 to see a movie 2 weeks in advance are either big fans or fucking idiots) My friend brought out a rather interesting quote from the story too: "This movie is great if you're 12 years old"....
Heresay at least from my viewpoint, but I'd consider the guy to be at least reputable in quoting news stories. I really can't wait until I see 500 slashdot comments, 90% of them saying "it sucked, I was so disappointed."
The more disgusting fact is that most of the Star Wars freaks that I know wouldn't admit something like that if they were threatened with death... You know, the same people who still think Mark Hamill (sp?) has acting talent.
-Erik-
I have dabbled with the FrontPage extensions, and I must say that I have never seen a more horrid hack. Not only are the insecure, but just not implimented well. A good idea that went VERY wrong.
Hehe, that's hilarious.... A job I had a while back had 4 MC*'s (2 MCSE, 2 MCP) and none of them would allow either IIS/NT serving, or Frontpage extensions on the Linux servers, but they'd plug M$ whereever they would go....
Capitalists are hilarious.
-Erik-
Doesn't Netscape Composer pretty much let you do this? It's got a WYSIWYG editor, and then you_ html (or whatever directory you've set up), then put in your username and password, and it will upload the page, and all the associated files. Is that pretty much what you are looking for?
click on the publish button, which from there you would put in ftp://ftp.mydomain.com/home/users/username/public
I was thinking the same thing, most WYSWYG editors do that, including Frontpage, and Dreamweaver (personal favorite because the source generated is actually readable).
I understand that people should be able to publish their ideas freely, but they had to learn to read before they could write, why shouldn't they have to learn how simple things like this work before they can publish their ideas?
Frankly, I'm getting rather tired with the commoditizing of, what 10 years ago, was either a hobby, or a profession. Frankly, I find it disgusting that as of late jsut about anyone with not a single iota of background can walk in and demand, that something that others spend years working with to learn fix or make easier for them.
At least you have to take a common sense test before they give you a drivers license.
-Erik-
The way I see it, all of the hacks doing GPL stuff can stick to their hobby and try to eek out a living on their chosen philosophy and lifestyle, and the real software engineers, meaning the people who take time to design specifications, implementation plans, work with management, through to implementation, can do the real nasty work that needs to get done in the world, and get paid for it.
Err, I can't decipher if this is a flame or if you're actually serious. There is a quite a bit of scientific software out there under GPL, by very real software engineers. Just look at the debian package listing for an example. I don't think that I need to cite the fact that a good deal of specifications are at least influenced by free code, if not completely designed under it.
I don't think certification has anything to do with hobby programming, or programming on a free basis. No one requires that a doctor or lawyer practices for money, just that they do it to a certification that is deemed CORRECT.
-Erik-