UDP and ICMP are kind of harder to classify, although I've most often seen UDP placed in Layer 4 and ICMP in Layer 3. If you were referring to the TCP/IP network model which better represents TCP/IP (go figure), they still wouldn't be at the same layers.
I think the bigger news is that he convinced a woman to join him in this endeavour or maybe that he was able to concentrate on building a plastic replica toy after she agreed
When copyright was first invented, it was applied to written text, items such as novels and textbooks. It made sense to give authors new rights in order to promote progress.
Software is not static text, it's a means of providing a service to the user and it is quite a different beast. That is why I am against historical interpetations of copyright & how it doesn't/shouldn't apply to software. Software is more than text/ideas, it's a service (at least in my mind).
I was trying to say that you need legal protection to be available to closed source companies which allows them to set limits and terms on the software they make. This could be covered by contract law, such as NDAs in the example of in-house software which protects the sofware from being released to the outside world, but you end up with the same thing anyways: a set of rules limiting distribution of binary software.
Today, those rules are part of copyright law, maybe they should be a separate entity but I think the protection should be roughly equivalent to that of present-day software copyright.
I was hypothesizing that if you were to release your software only in binary form, your product (binaries) would not have any kind of protection if it were not for copyright. Consequently, many companies would not have incentive to develop software products.
This would leave shareware/open-source as the only viable software development methodologies.
2. Cancel copyright on functional information (such as software). The power it grants the copyright holder over its user, even in a limited time, is too great. Software creation, in most cases, requires little to no financial incentive, and in niche cases where it does, payment to programmers is still possible.
I don't understand how this comment gets modded +5 Insightful with no dissenting opinions on a forum for computer technology professionals. When did the average Slashdot moderator become a warez kid?
How else could I explain such support for cancelling copyright on software? Software patents yes, copyrights no. I know this is an open source community but you can't seriously believe that you should ban closed source software development.
Open source is great, forcing open source on companies isn't. If someone should decide not to disclose source for his program, that should be up to him, it shouldn't be up to the warez kids to scoop it up and claim "oh, but I am entitled to violate the contract because of my interpretation of the historical meaning of copyright."
All software isn't fun to develop, and even if it is, you can't waste time trying to assemble a team of dedicated and qualified volunteers to work on your huge project. That's why finanical incentives sometimes are necessary. And don't forget that developers are being paid as we speak to develop open source software.
As is often repeated, most software development is done in-house. If a company develops a tool for itself, do you really believe a competing company should be allowed to use that tool without the creator's permission just because it is in binary form? Even the GPL enforces terms on binaries.
Finally, don't forget that the distinction between binary and source is only in your head. Assembly language may very well be the only source for some programs.
Mod KillerCow's reply up. The original post regarding RIM's importance in Waterloo should have stayed "Funny", not insightful nor interesting.
I live in Kitchener-Waterloo (literally adjacent cities), I am in an office 15 min walk from the RIM buildings right now, I drive past RIM every day I go to work, and I worked at RIM for several internships (co-ops as we call them)... The original poster is either full of it or is practicing a form of humour too subtle for Slashdot.
How about which games are on the CD?
on
Games Knoppix
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Let me be the +%d Informative karma whore and post the actual contents of the Knoppix Games CD before we all rush off and go download 700MB over our feeble North American DSL/cable connections.
You need at least 256 MB RAM to use your accelerated video card.
That should give you a taste of what's on the CD. Personally, I don't think it's worth it. It contains a lot of nostalgic arcade games written by fans of those games for other fans. Also, the GamesKnoppix distro organizer has himself said there are no violent games on this CD.
On an unrelated matter, Merry Christmas
Now here's the rest of the games on the CD:
Boson
Bsdgames
Crimson Fields
Dosbox (Emulator)
Empire
Konquest
Mangoquest
Pysol
Tuxcart
Zsnes (Emulator)
Ace-of-penguin
Battle for Wesnoth
Bzflag, Bzflag-Server
Clanbomber
Crossfire (GTK client)
Enigma
Foobillard
Freeciv, Freeciv-server
Freesci
Gltron
Gnuchess
Jump'n'Bump (joystick support patch, special graphic patches)
So this light display -- it's like a warning beacon of sorts, right?
A light house, if you will, to warn the woman that the sexy guy she met at the club is an engineer and it's time to start preparing her excuses and leave, lest she crash against the inexperienced rock of his virginity.
I'm not a contributor to Mozilla so I really can't answer that question fully. If someone reading this is, maybe they can give a more accurate explanation of why rather than my generalizations. But anyways, here goes...
My reply is: the bugs aren't very similar, there are fewer, and they are handled better.
I find it suprising that whenever a new Mozilla security issues is discovered, a certain % of Slashdot members always suggests the same argument as this article: it's the same crap as IE, but it has less exposure.
I'm not going to use the Apache vs IIS example, I assume you've read it on the way down to this comment.
Have you ever written code? Mozilla is software written by humans. Complicated software will always produce unexpected interactions of components. Bugs are inevitable.
BUT:
1. How many bugs?
2. How long does it take to fix the bug? Look at the turnaround time.
3. Are you sure the bugs are fixed? Consider transparency. Were you kept in the dark? Did you not have access to the bug database? Were you not able to see first-hand the diff for the fix and verify independently that it was fixed soundly?
4. What type of bug? Is there a buffer overflow issue every two damn weeks? Most of the Mozilla security issues I've seen are high-level issues (XUL, tabbed browsing, shell://). It's not that the coder didn't pay enough attention or didn't dedicate himself body mind and soul to writing secure code, it's that these exploits are just clever ways of messing up software that most developers wouldn't think of. I believe these types of bugs are inevitable. Careful re-design could minimize them.
Basically, I'm trying to say that bugs are a fact of life in software development whether closed or open source. Half-assed focus on security isn't.
I would agree with TFA if the author were comparing Internet Explorer 4 with, let's say, Netscape 6 or Opera 7. If he were, then I would whole-heartedly agree that IE is a victim of its own popularity and that software monocolture is an "evolutionary" reality mirrored in biological systems.
But...
There is a difference between how IE code gets written and how Mozilla code gets written. I'm not going to make any asinine qualitative comparisons between the skills of Mozilla contributors and MS staff (I respect both), but let's face it....
YOU know the difference between writing a commercial product with an unrealistic deadline, a list of new features four pages long (most of which are crap) and under the direction of non-technical managers who like Gantt charts and daily productivity reports and writing a project for your own self-satisfaction.
Mozilla code is written incrementally, with the goal of quality in mind, under public scrutiny (no peer review beats public scrutiny) and many of the contributors are doing it because they want to do it and want to do a good job. It's their pet project.
Compare the quality of code you write for work or in college under strict deadlines, and the code you write for fun.
- How many alternatives algorithms do you go through with each? - Do you settle for "good enough" when you are writing code for yourself? - Are you doing your own corner-case QA as well as you could be when you make that check-in into the company CVS when you know that QA will most likely test it (as an intern, I used to share a desk with QA guys, the catch is that they love to cut corners).
Not to mention endemic problems with large corporate projects of any type: corporate pride which prevents people from going back on bad decisions (ActiveX and IE security zones), lack of management support (how many top coders are still actively developing IE? any?), and all kinds of office politics. Many of these are avoided with well managed open source projects.
Slashdot Mirror
"spider-like robots could construct complex structures"
"the spider bots could build large structures by crawling over a web"
Sounds like Google should do it.
What you wrote is right on except for the minor quibble that ICMP/TCP/UDP are not all layer 3 protocols.
According to the OSI Model:
Layer 1: Physical
Layer 2: Data Link
Layer 3: Network (IP goes here)
Layer 4: Transmission (TCP goes here)
Layer 5: Session
Layer 6: Presentation
Layer 7: Application
UDP and ICMP are kind of harder to classify, although I've most often seen UDP placed in Layer 4 and ICMP in Layer 3. If you were referring to the TCP/IP network model which better represents TCP/IP (go figure), they still wouldn't be at the same layers.
Layer 4: Application (HTTP)
Layer 3: Transport (TCP, UDP)
Layer 2: Internetwork (IP, ICMP)
Layer 1: Network Access (eg Ethernet)
I think the bigger news is that he convinced a woman to join him in this endeavour or maybe that he was able to concentrate on building a plastic replica toy after she agreed
I disagree with you on a couple of points.
When copyright was first invented, it was applied to written text, items such as novels and textbooks. It made sense to give authors new rights in order to promote progress.
Software is not static text, it's a means of providing a service to the user and it is quite a different beast. That is why I am against historical interpetations of copyright & how it doesn't/shouldn't apply to software. Software is more than text/ideas, it's a service (at least in my mind).
I was trying to say that you need legal protection to be available to closed source companies which allows them to set limits and terms on the software they make. This could be covered by contract law, such as NDAs in the example of in-house software which protects the sofware from being released to the outside world, but you end up with the same thing anyways: a set of rules limiting distribution of binary software.
Today, those rules are part of copyright law, maybe they should be a separate entity but I think the protection should be roughly equivalent to that of present-day software copyright.
I was hypothesizing that if you were to release your software only in binary form, your product (binaries) would not have any kind of protection if it were not for copyright. Consequently, many companies would not have incentive to develop software products. This would leave shareware/open-source as the only viable software development methodologies.
I don't understand how this comment gets modded +5 Insightful with no dissenting opinions on a forum for computer technology professionals. When did the average Slashdot moderator become a warez kid?
How else could I explain such support for cancelling copyright on software? Software patents yes, copyrights no. I know this is an open source community but you can't seriously believe that you should ban closed source software development.
Open source is great, forcing open source on companies isn't. If someone should decide not to disclose source for his program, that should be up to him, it shouldn't be up to the warez kids to scoop it up and claim "oh, but I am entitled to violate the contract because of my interpretation of the historical meaning of copyright."
All software isn't fun to develop, and even if it is, you can't waste time trying to assemble a team of dedicated and qualified volunteers to work on your huge project. That's why finanical incentives sometimes are necessary. And don't forget that developers are being paid as we speak to develop open source software.
As is often repeated, most software development is done in-house. If a company develops a tool for itself, do you really believe a competing company should be allowed to use that tool without the creator's permission just because it is in binary form? Even the GPL enforces terms on binaries.
Finally, don't forget that the distinction between binary and source is only in your head. Assembly language may very well be the only source for some programs.
Mod KillerCow's reply up. The original post regarding RIM's importance in Waterloo should have stayed "Funny", not insightful nor interesting.
I live in Kitchener-Waterloo (literally adjacent cities), I am in an office 15 min walk from the RIM buildings right now, I drive past RIM every day I go to work, and I worked at RIM for several internships (co-ops as we call them)... The original poster is either full of it or is practicing a form of humour too subtle for Slashdot.
From here, the newest games on the CD are:
Castle-Combat
Globulation 2
Hatman
Kobodeluxe
Miniracer
Pingus
Rafkill
You need at least 256 MB RAM to use your accelerated video card. That should give you a taste of what's on the CD. Personally, I don't think it's worth it. It contains a lot of nostalgic arcade games written by fans of those games for other fans. Also, the GamesKnoppix distro organizer has himself said there are no violent games on this CD.
On an unrelated matter, Merry Christmas
Now here's the rest of the games on the CD:
Here's what he was talking about:
Google with Auto Complete on Just start typing in the search field.
It's a beta feature.
What are their hopes for finding new jobs?
How do they feel about warmer climates? Relocation? And how up to date is their knowledge of Indian dialects?
So this light display -- it's like a warning beacon of sorts, right? A light house, if you will, to warn the woman that the sexy guy she met at the club is an engineer and it's time to start preparing her excuses and leave, lest she crash against the inexperienced rock of his virginity.
I'm not a contributor to Mozilla so I really can't answer that question fully. If someone reading this is, maybe they can give a more accurate explanation of why rather than my generalizations. But anyways, here goes... My reply is: the bugs aren't very similar, there are fewer, and they are handled better. I find it suprising that whenever a new Mozilla security issues is discovered, a certain % of Slashdot members always suggests the same argument as this article: it's the same crap as IE, but it has less exposure. I'm not going to use the Apache vs IIS example, I assume you've read it on the way down to this comment. Have you ever written code? Mozilla is software written by humans. Complicated software will always produce unexpected interactions of components. Bugs are inevitable. BUT: 1. How many bugs? 2. How long does it take to fix the bug? Look at the turnaround time. 3. Are you sure the bugs are fixed? Consider transparency. Were you kept in the dark? Did you not have access to the bug database? Were you not able to see first-hand the diff for the fix and verify independently that it was fixed soundly? 4. What type of bug? Is there a buffer overflow issue every two damn weeks? Most of the Mozilla security issues I've seen are high-level issues (XUL, tabbed browsing, shell://). It's not that the coder didn't pay enough attention or didn't dedicate himself body mind and soul to writing secure code, it's that these exploits are just clever ways of messing up software that most developers wouldn't think of. I believe these types of bugs are inevitable. Careful re-design could minimize them. Basically, I'm trying to say that bugs are a fact of life in software development whether closed or open source. Half-assed focus on security isn't.
Methodology matters.
I would agree with TFA if the author were comparing Internet Explorer 4 with, let's say, Netscape 6 or Opera 7. If he were, then I would whole-heartedly agree that IE is a victim of its own popularity and that software monocolture is an "evolutionary" reality mirrored in biological systems.
But...
There is a difference between how IE code gets written and how Mozilla code gets written. I'm not going to make any asinine qualitative comparisons between the skills of Mozilla contributors and MS staff (I respect both), but let's face it....
YOU know the difference between writing a commercial product with an unrealistic deadline, a list of new features four pages long (most of which are crap) and under the direction of non-technical managers who like Gantt charts and daily productivity reports and writing a project for your own self-satisfaction.
Mozilla code is written incrementally, with the goal of quality in mind, under public scrutiny (no peer review beats public scrutiny) and many of the contributors are doing it because they want to do it and want to do a good job. It's their pet project.
Compare the quality of code you write for work or in college under strict deadlines, and the code you write for fun.
- How many alternatives algorithms do you go through with each?
- Do you settle for "good enough" when you are writing code for yourself?
- Are you doing your own corner-case QA as well as you could be when you make that check-in into the company CVS when you know that QA will most likely test it (as an intern, I used to share a desk with QA guys, the catch is that they love to cut corners).
Not to mention endemic problems with large corporate projects of any type: corporate pride which prevents people from going back on bad decisions (ActiveX and IE security zones), lack of management support (how many top coders are still actively developing IE? any?), and all kinds of office politics. Many of these are avoided with well managed open source projects.
Cheers,
AC