The only solution might be to run all the code on the server. Yes, really. Imagine the client side just being a 2D graphical dumb terminal just drawing frames from the server. It can't be 3D because it would be hackable at the driver-level again.
You can safely run some of the code on the client, and you can do 3D. The client would collect user input (keyboard/mouse/joystick/etc), and send it to the server. The server would do all the calculation as to what the new game state is. The server would then send to the client only the information the player is allowed to have. The client would then do the 3D rendering of that info, the sound construction and mixing, etc.
The server properly limiting the info will prevent the looking around the corner problem. The server doing the input processing will minimize the aimbot problem. You couldn't get the extreme aimbots that Quake has seen (since before being Freed), but you could still get things like "snap to target" mouse motion, or crosshairs that take target motion into account. Aimbots would work no better than an excellent player, rather than making the player superhuman.
As ESR said, the most successful Open Source games would have to be designed with client modification in mind. Quake wasn't, which is why these deficiencies seem so blatant.
really my point I think that there are classes of applications that can't be addressed by Open Source at all
This application cannot safely be addressed by Closed Source software easier, as in the orignal example. It is impossible to make something secure from the user, but accessible to the user's local CPU. The only safe solution is to never give the information to the local machine at all. This solution will work at least as well with Open Source software as it will with Closed.
Never fall into the fallacy that Closed Source software allows Security through Obscurity to work, it never will work in a security critical environment.
Plain and simple, if your computer can read data well enough to do something with it, you can read & copy it. This is an old maxim of computing, goes at least back to the Apple ][ days, and it's still just as true. As in your example, closing the source does not make the system any more secure in the long run, someone motivated enough can figure out how to read it, copy it, whatever they want to do with it. There is no way to safely send a customer something that their computer will be able to read but not the customer.
The answer for companies who want to give customers this sort of access is simple, don't send it. Improvements in network bandwidth allow the vendor to set up a black box on the internet. Customers would be able to log on to the black box, and access the simulation with no access to the data used to create the simulation. They just will see the interface.
I think all sane people should be against patenting the obvious. Ruling out patenting the obvious requires no change in patent law, just having the USPTO follow their own guidelines better.
Where I (and I think many of us here) differ from the USPTO is in patenting technology. Patents were designed to protect the development of tools, not technology. You develop a better adjustable wrench, you patent it (tool). You never were supposed to be able to patent the technique of tightening a bolt by using a wrench (technology). Software patents, business practice patents and algorithm patents are all patenting technology, not tools.
Patenting technology is dangerous, since it stifles innovation, development, and even the activities of the general public. It also encourages flooding an already overloaded legal system with long and expensive lawsuits. The only people who really benefit from technology patents are the lawyers.
As for the specific Google patent, I would agree that the technology it patents is not obvious. Also, given that the current system allows technology patents, it's far easier for Google to defend their business from someone else's patent if they've got one themselves, so I don't begrudge them a defensive technology patent. The point where I get upset, and will get upset at Google, is if and when they use the patent as a tool for threatening (or suing) someone else.
If opening the source of the client made multiplayer cheating possible, then it was possible before the source was open, just harder to implement. The obvious solution isn't really a fix for Quake, but care in the design of multiplayer games.
In any multiplayer game, you have a server and at least two clients. Anything critical and cheatable should be on the server, anything computation intensive should be on the client. For example, the client determines the keyboard/mouse/joystick/whatever state, and sends it to the server. The server resolves the action, and sends a schematic of the situation to the client (health, ammo, layout of area, etc.). The client then handles the 3d rendering, sound mixing, and so forth. No amount of cheating on the client end (short of out of game attacks on the other's computers or networks) would affect any other players. Cheating could be done on the server end, but there will always be cheat-free servers available.
In fact, that animated special inspired my sister and her friends to celebrate Life Day every year instead of Christmas. They still do so to this day:-).
It was buggy and unstable (considerably more so than 4.61), so yes, but the bulk of the difference between M11 and M12 is supposed to be bug fixes, so that should be less of a problem.
Other than Lynx, there's no released browser out there that's free of major problems. I use Netscape because I need inline graphics and ECMAScript, and it sucks less than the alternatives. I plan to switch to Mozilla (or some other Gecko-based alternative) as my regular browser as soon as the bug fixes get it to the right point where I can use it and still get all my work done.
OK, the big Free Software licenses are: GPL, LGPL, Old BSD, New BSD, Artistic and X Consortium. All of them allow the author to release the software under a proprietary license. The author can do anything they want with the software. All of them assert copyright and require that copyright be included when redistributing the software. The differences boil down to: additional restrictions, advertising and linking to software under other licenses.
-> The New BSD license and X Consortium license allow additional restrictions, and linking to anything. I see no functional difference between the two. -> The Old BSD license is the New BSD license plus the advertising clause. It (and the many unique BSDesque licenses derived from it) are the only ones which requires notice during advertising, so I won't bother mentioning each one that has no advertising clause. -> The Artistic license prevents additional restrictions (i.e. relicensing by others), but allows linking to anything -> The LGPL prevents additional restrictions. It allows non-(L)GPL apps to link to it, but it's unclear whether or not it can link to non-LPL libraries. -> The GPL prevents additional restrictions. It also prevents linking to software under any license that doesn't meet very strict requirements, which the GPL, LGPL and X Consortium license definately meet, the New BSD license probably meets, but few others do.
Thus the Artistic license does not allow switching to a proprietary license any more than the GPL does. What it does allow you to do is develop Free Software in a proprietary world. Free software developers on Windows should consider it, as many libraries and tools there are proprietary, and Artistic offers better protection than, say BSD. Also, Free Software developers developing for Qt and/or KDE should consider it, as it works very well with the QPL, with no arguments from GPL developers.
No, Roblimo-quoting-ZioPino said it was free software, not Free software.
Roblimo also used the term free in the title, which was not a quote. The convention I use of capitalizing "Free" when I want to draw attention to the word and its meaning is by no means universal, the fact that ZioPino didn't capitalize it is an indication of nothing. The term "free software" on Slashdot generally means "Free software", not "software you don't have to pay for".
If you insist upon being a license zealot, at least try to be a literate one. There are few things that bother me more than people who cry wolf in terms of "invasion of privacy" or "misuse of term Free" before really even reading what they're berating.
Who is being a license zealot? What about my post was illiterate? When did "invasion of privacy" come up at all? When did I berate anything? Did you actually read my post?
One of the highest-ranked posts on this thread so far mentioned being a developer who already uses a native version of this product and got some benefit from the Java version, which this story addresses.
At least one guy benefitted from this.
Several people moderated him up, apparently because they thought the information he had share regarding this program was worth the time of others. Apparently, more than one guy benefitted from this.
I'm glad to hear this, but what does this have to do with my post, or even with the rest of your response to this post?
All I'm saying is, there's no point in trying to start a flame war,
Than why do you appear to be trying to?
when [hopefully] most Slashdot readers are intelligent enough to realize that free in this context did not imply open source
Free in this context generally does imply Open Source. There was no indication in the article that it didn't in this case. Yes, I am intelligent enough to realize the term was probably used in error, but I had no way of confirming it, as the referenced site was down when I checked.
(in the general, nonpolitically stunted meaning of the term).
I'm not sure what you mean here. The meaning of the term "Open Source" is roughly equivalent to the term "Free", but with a more pragmatic and less ideological focus. The Open Source FAQ says "[Open Source is] a pitch for `free software' on solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping." I guess that would be the "politically stunted meaning" in your terms, but I'm at a loss as to what the "nonpolitically stunted meaning" would be.
As such, what did you hope to contribute to the discussion with your post?
I hoped to draw attention to confusing and inaccurate terms in the article. Roblimo is comparibly new at this, he might not have realized he was confusing the issue. Other readers might not have realized that we were not talking about Free Software here, in spite of the headline.
First step - the download: it was ok so far, but you have to be a community.borland member in order to get your license code. ... Third step - starting it up The first time you start it up you have to type in your license code.
I thought Roblimo said this was Free software? This doesn't sound Free at all to me. I can't get to the site to check for myself, it gives me a "Forbidden" error.
I see nothing in the GPL that requires me to give software to anyone that asks. I just can't restrict further redistribution.
In general, this is true. In this particular case the software in binary form can be distributed without regards to age, but when a minor goes to retrieve the source code, as per the GPL, the 18+ restriction comes to play.
I fail to understand the Linux community's obsession with recreating commercial products
First off, it's recreating Free versions of proprietary software, the fact that the proprietary software is commercial is incidental, there's plenty of Free commercial software out there. Secondly, why they're recreated is simple, we want to be able perform the task the program is designed for, but with all the Freedom, control, portability, etc. benefits of Free software.
VMWare will never run on Be or an Alpha linux box, FreeMWare might be ported there. A native port of FreeMWare to FreeBSD or HURD might well be faster and more reliable than VMWare run as a compatibility layer. A security or bug fix can be made in FreeMWare without the intervention of any company. FreeMWare can never become unmaintained due to bankrupcy or merger. There's plenty of reasons to work on a Free version.
Is there some great reason why we should not pay for VMWare?
No, is there some great reason Anonymous Cowards keep ignoring the fact that Freedom has nothing to do with price? Nobody is stopping you, or anyone else, from paying for VMWare.
Is there any single application you people are willing to pay for?
Yes, in fact many people working on Free software development (particularly Free OS development) have purchased VMWare. That doesn't change the fact that they'd rather be using Free software for the same thing, and many people are willing to work towards making that a reality.
Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff.
Let's get real. Shrinkwrap software (i.e. proprietary software sold by piece, such as VMWare, Microsoft Office, etc) employs the minority of programmers, but gets the majority of attention. If all shrinkwrap proprietary software companies were to simultaneously go belly up and die, very few professional programmers would be out of a job. Most of us do consulting or custom work. Free software does nothing but help us, it creates jobs and opportunities in the more professional programming positions.
This is to correct a factual error in my post. I referred to characters 223 for open curly double quotes, 224 for close curly double quotes and 222 for open curly single quotes. I had forgotten that the method I was using to find out the codes reported the number in octal, not decimal. The real numbers are 147, 148 and 146, respectively.
As a biproduct, they don't match the German S, Thorn, or accented a; rather, they fall in a block of numbers that is reserved for use as control characters. Under the right circumstances, who knows what a terminal might interpret them as.
Yes, ActiveX is an adequate solution for applets on homogenous, Windows-only, Intel-only intranets. OTOH, few places are like that, most places I've worked have had at least one employee who insisted on having their Mac, and ActiveX doesn't work on the Macintosh's IE version. Also, with all the new non-Windows technology coming out, do you really want to be forced to stay with Windows just to support your legacy ActiveX programming efforts.
As for preventing IE from using the special characters, I know in Word you can turn off SmartQuotes and other character substitutions, if IE now does SmartQuotes too, I assume you can also turn them off in IE.
Option 2, use Netscape (and refrain from cutting and pasting from Word, Windows Netscape will pass those special characters right along too).
Option 3, use a font that's mapped to ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 rather than Windows Code Page 1252 Latin 1. If you open up the most recent version of Charcacter Map to look at a font, it should display the font as seven lines of 32 characters each. A box usually indicates an undefined character. A true ISO 8859 font would have that middle line all boxes, since those codes are reserved for control characters.
I would like to know exactly what IE has that is not part of the [W3C] standard. Well, the one that jumps out first, since you use them, is IE's use of SmartQuotes. ActiveX is not only completely non-standard, it is a security hole. IE 5.0 does not have complete CSS or DOM implementations even though those standards have been complete for ages. Its XML implementation violates standard namespace conventions. Granted, Netscape 4.0 is no better when it comes to standards compliance, but Mozilla is.
so from my casual observations, netscape doesn't support as many standards as IE. Your casual observations do not support your conclusion. Neither Netscape 4 nor IE 5 fully support standards, your "experts" are merely more used to IE's quirks than Netscape's.
And if Microsoft's is "bending" standards into the browser, that would seem like a good thing. How? Microsoft implementing an IE-only feature only serves to fragment the web into IE and non-IE camps, and helps Microsoft to tie their customers to them more securely. If Microsoft (and Netscape) were to follow the standards better, consumers would have richer web content available to them, with fewer complications. Netscape has repented and is actively working on standards compliance, what is Microsoft doing to better support the standards?
The problem is a two parter, Microsoft produces non-standard (as per ISO 8859-1) characters in their output, and most non-windows browsers expect standard characters. Netscape on NT generally uses Windows' non-standard fonts as its default, and that is why you have no problem seeing the characters. Try switching to another OS, or even a standard ISO mapped font on Windows, and you'll see the problem.
Most recent Microsoft products use a feature called "Smart Quotes", which converts normal apostrophies, single quotes and double quotes to non-standard characters supposed to represent curly single and double quotes. If you view his post carefully, you will see that it does not use ISO 8859-1 characters, nor does it use the entity names. It uses character #223 for open curly double quotes, character #224 for close curly double quotes, character #222 for apostrophies. According to the list you referenced, those should be the German sharp S, lowercase a with an accent grave, and a capital Thorn, respectively.
If Microsoft were following the standards, it would have either: * Left the quotes and apostrophies alone; or * Used the HTML 4.0 tags ‘, ’, “ and ”, as needed.
Justin, you probably should put an update on the story as well, perhaps pointing to this one. That way people searching through the archives later won't get confused if they just find the older story.
I don't care if Novel is doing it, or disgruntled ex-employees; I will be happy to see NDS available as Free Software. Certainly Novell has no reason to keep the NDS client software closed. Opening the NetWare and NDS clients could only serve to increase their market penetration.
Freeing the NDS server would require some serious reworking of Novell's business model, so I'd be more surprised to see that open. Let's just wait and see what happens.
I for one, will happily use TRG's GPL'ed software, now that I know they exist. They need to get out more, I've been searching for Free Netware-Linux interoperability solutions for six months now and never came across them.
I find the comments on the BSDish license promoting (a) fork interesting but underdeveloped.
The article doesn't say the BSD license is more prone to forking than the GPL, but it does comment on the fork from 386BSD to FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/BSDi. It says that fork is stable because of the different focuses of the different forks. GPL programs are just as likely or unlikely to have forks which persist due to such differences in focus.
Note BSDi in the above list, however. It points out one reason to fork that BSD permits but the GPL doesn't, license change. If someone wants to fork a project because they want to distribute their modifications with more license restrictions than the original, BSD allows it and GPL doesn't.
[Disclaimer: I am not saying that either BSD or GPL are better because of this difference, only that this is a notable difference]
I don't disagree with you philosophically, but take Red Hat (please!): RPMs, directories in different places, etc. etc. Granted, not "kernel" mods, but "different" -- and significantly different (IMHO) than any other Linux distro. Yet, nobody but nobody has adopted their modifications.
Other than Mandrake, Macmillan, LinuxPPC, and a horde of other distributions. Last I checked, the LSB project has determined that RPM will be the standard file format for Linux packaging. That's why Debian is working on becoming less package-format dependant.
I'm not a kernel geek, but I'd be willing to bet that there are kernel differences too.
Red Hat generally ships its kernel with the AC patches compiled in. Most of the elements of the AC patches find their way into the main kernel tree eventually.
e.g. you can't be a Debian admin and just walk off the street and admin a Red Hat box.
It's certainly easier to go between the various Linux distros than it is to go between the various commercial Unixes. I had little problem going from Slackware to Red Hat, personally. I don't see how a Debian->Red Hat or Red Hat->Debian migration would be harder than that, likely it will be easier.
If I recall, there was a court ruling that indicated that making copy of software for archive purposes qualified as "fair use", and was therefore legal. Part of the reasoning behind the ruling was the fragility and unreliability of the floppy disks used to distribute software. I'm not sure if the same ruling would hold for software distributed by CD, and I'm pretty sure it would not hold for entertainment distributed by DVD.
On the other hand, I am not a lawyer, but I feel that the main argument for legality is a strong one. DeCSS is designed to enable private viewing of legally purchased DVD's, and the fact that it can be adapted to enable illegal copying of copyrighted materials is an incidental side effect and does not render the software illegal. Furthermore, it was reverse engineered in a country whose laws explicitly allow reverse engineering for interoperability purposes (i.e. making your DVD-Video work with Linux).
Slashdot Mirror
SheldonYoung wrote:
The only solution might be to run all the code on the server. Yes, really. Imagine the client side just being a 2D graphical dumb terminal just drawing frames from the server. It can't be 3D because it would be hackable at the driver-level again.
You can safely run some of the code on the client, and you can do 3D. The client would collect user input (keyboard/mouse/joystick/etc), and send it to the server. The server would do all the calculation as to what the new game state is. The server would then send to the client only the information the player is allowed to have. The client would then do the 3D rendering of that info, the sound construction and mixing, etc.
The server properly limiting the info will prevent the looking around the corner problem. The server doing the input processing will minimize the aimbot problem. You couldn't get the extreme aimbots that Quake has seen (since before being Freed), but you could still get things like "snap to target" mouse motion, or crosshairs that take target motion into account. Aimbots would work no better than an excellent player, rather than making the player superhuman.
As ESR said, the most successful Open Source games would have to be designed with client modification in mind. Quake wasn't, which is why these deficiencies seem so blatant.
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taniwha wrote:
really my point I think that there are classes of applications that can't be addressed by Open Source at all
This application cannot safely be addressed by Closed Source software easier, as in the orignal example. It is impossible to make something secure from the user, but accessible to the user's local CPU. The only safe solution is to never give the information to the local machine at all. This solution will work at least as well with Open Source software as it will with Closed.
Never fall into the fallacy that Closed Source software allows Security through Obscurity to work, it never will work in a security critical environment.
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Plain and simple, if your computer can read data well enough to do something with it, you can read & copy it. This is an old maxim of computing, goes at least back to the Apple ][ days, and it's still just as true. As in your example, closing the source does not make the system any more secure in the long run, someone motivated enough can figure out how to read it, copy it, whatever they want to do with it. There is no way to safely send a customer something that their computer will be able to read but not the customer.
The answer for companies who want to give customers this sort of access is simple, don't send it. Improvements in network bandwidth allow the vendor to set up a black box on the internet. Customers would be able to log on to the black box, and access the simulation with no access to the data used to create the simulation. They just will see the interface.
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Which do you consider more dangerous to personal liberties on the Internet, national governments or multinational corporations, and why?
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I think all sane people should be against patenting the obvious. Ruling out patenting the obvious requires no change in patent law, just having the USPTO follow their own guidelines better.
Where I (and I think many of us here) differ from the USPTO is in patenting technology. Patents were designed to protect the development of tools, not technology. You develop a better adjustable wrench, you patent it (tool). You never were supposed to be able to patent the technique of tightening a bolt by using a wrench (technology). Software patents, business practice patents and algorithm patents are all patenting technology, not tools.
Patenting technology is dangerous, since it stifles innovation, development, and even the activities of the general public. It also encourages flooding an already overloaded legal system with long and expensive lawsuits. The only people who really benefit from technology patents are the lawyers.
As for the specific Google patent, I would agree that the technology it patents is not obvious. Also, given that the current system allows technology patents, it's far easier for Google to defend their business from someone else's patent if they've got one themselves, so I don't begrudge them a defensive technology patent. The point where I get upset, and will get upset at Google, is if and when they use the patent as a tool for threatening (or suing) someone else.
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If opening the source of the client made multiplayer cheating possible, then it was possible before the source was open, just harder to implement. The obvious solution isn't really a fix for Quake, but care in the design of multiplayer games.
In any multiplayer game, you have a server and at least two clients. Anything critical and cheatable should be on the server, anything computation intensive should be on the client. For example, the client determines the keyboard/mouse/joystick/whatever state, and sends it to the server. The server resolves the action, and sends a schematic of the situation to the client (health, ammo, layout of area, etc.). The client then handles the 3d rendering, sound mixing, and so forth. No amount of cheating on the client end (short of out of game attacks on the other's computers or networks) would affect any other players. Cheating could be done on the server end, but there will always be cheat-free servers available.
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In fact, that animated special inspired my sister and her friends to celebrate Life Day every year instead of Christmas. They still do so to this day :-).
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It was buggy and unstable (considerably more so than 4.61), so yes, but the bulk of the difference between M11 and M12 is supposed to be bug fixes, so that should be less of a problem.
Other than Lynx, there's no released browser out there that's free of major problems. I use Netscape because I need inline graphics and ECMAScript, and it sucks less than the alternatives. I plan to switch to Mozilla (or some other Gecko-based alternative) as my regular browser as soon as the bug fixes get it to the right point where I can use it and still get all my work done.
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Considering M11 was almost good enough to replace Netscape 4.61 as my primary browser, M12 should be an impressive sight to see.
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Because that would be a nasty commute.
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OK, the big Free Software licenses are: GPL, LGPL, Old BSD, New BSD, Artistic and X Consortium. All of them allow the author to release the software under a proprietary license. The author can do anything they want with the software. All of them assert copyright and require that copyright be included when redistributing the software. The differences boil down to: additional restrictions, advertising and linking to software under other licenses.
-> The New BSD license and X Consortium license allow additional restrictions, and linking to anything. I see no functional difference between the two.
-> The Old BSD license is the New BSD license plus the advertising clause. It (and the many unique BSDesque licenses derived from it) are the only ones which requires notice during advertising, so I won't bother mentioning each one that has no advertising clause.
-> The Artistic license prevents additional restrictions (i.e. relicensing by others), but allows linking to anything
-> The LGPL prevents additional restrictions. It allows non-(L)GPL apps to link to it, but it's unclear whether or not it can link to non-LPL libraries.
-> The GPL prevents additional restrictions. It also prevents linking to software under any license that doesn't meet very strict requirements, which the GPL, LGPL and X Consortium license definately meet, the New BSD license probably meets, but few others do.
Thus the Artistic license does not allow switching to a proprietary license any more than the GPL does. What it does allow you to do is develop Free Software in a proprietary world. Free software developers on Windows should consider it, as many libraries and tools there are proprietary, and Artistic offers better protection than, say BSD. Also, Free Software developers developing for Qt and/or KDE should consider it, as it works very well with the QPL, with no arguments from GPL developers.
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hankaholic wrote:
No, Roblimo-quoting-ZioPino said it was free software, not Free software.
Roblimo also used the term free in the title, which was not a quote. The convention I use of capitalizing "Free" when I want to draw attention to the word and its meaning is by no means universal, the fact that ZioPino didn't capitalize it is an indication of nothing. The term "free software" on Slashdot generally means "Free software", not "software you don't have to pay for".
If you insist upon being a license zealot, at least try to be a literate one. There are few things that bother me more than people who cry wolf in terms of "invasion of privacy" or "misuse of term Free" before really even reading what they're berating.
Who is being a license zealot? What about my post was illiterate? When did "invasion of privacy" come up at all? When did I berate anything? Did you actually read my post?
One of the highest-ranked posts on this thread so far mentioned being a developer who already uses a native version of this product and got some benefit from the Java version, which this story addresses.
At least one guy benefitted from this.
Several people moderated him up, apparently because they thought the information he had share regarding this program was worth the time of others. Apparently, more than one guy benefitted from this.
I'm glad to hear this, but what does this have to do with my post, or even with the rest of your response to this post?
All I'm saying is, there's no point in trying to start a flame war,
Than why do you appear to be trying to?
when [hopefully] most Slashdot readers are intelligent enough to realize that free in this context did not imply open source
Free in this context generally does imply Open Source. There was no indication in the article that it didn't in this case. Yes, I am intelligent enough to realize the term was probably used in error, but I had no way of confirming it, as the referenced site was down when I checked.
(in the general, nonpolitically stunted meaning of the term).
I'm not sure what you mean here. The meaning of the term "Open Source" is roughly equivalent to the term "Free", but with a more pragmatic and less ideological focus. The Open Source FAQ says "[Open Source is] a pitch for `free software' on solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping." I guess that would be the "politically stunted meaning" in your terms, but I'm at a loss as to what the "nonpolitically stunted meaning" would be.
As such, what did you hope to contribute to the discussion with your post?
I hoped to draw attention to confusing and inaccurate terms in the article. Roblimo is comparibly new at this, he might not have realized he was confusing the issue. Other readers might not have realized that we were not talking about Free Software here, in spite of the headline.
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Anonymous Coward wrote:
First step - the download:
it was ok so far, but you have to be a community.borland member in order to get your license code.
...
Third step - starting it up
The first time you start it up you have to type in your license code.
I thought Roblimo said this was Free software? This doesn't sound Free at all to me. I can't get to the site to check for myself, it gives me a "Forbidden" error.
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copito wrote:
I see nothing in the GPL that requires me to give software to anyone that asks. I just can't restrict further redistribution.
In general, this is true. In this particular case the software in binary form can be distributed without regards to age, but when a minor goes to retrieve the source code, as per the GPL, the 18+ restriction comes to play.
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Anonymous Coward wrote:
I fail to understand the Linux community's obsession with recreating commercial products
First off, it's recreating Free versions of proprietary software, the fact that the proprietary software is commercial is incidental, there's plenty of Free commercial software out there. Secondly, why they're recreated is simple, we want to be able perform the task the program is designed for, but with all the Freedom, control, portability, etc. benefits of Free software.
VMWare will never run on Be or an Alpha linux box, FreeMWare might be ported there. A native port of FreeMWare to FreeBSD or HURD might well be faster and more reliable than VMWare run as a compatibility layer. A security or bug fix can be made in FreeMWare without the intervention of any company. FreeMWare can never become unmaintained due to bankrupcy or merger. There's plenty of reasons to work on a Free version.
Is there some great reason why we should not pay for VMWare?
No, is there some great reason Anonymous Cowards keep ignoring the fact that Freedom has nothing to do with price? Nobody is stopping you, or anyone else, from paying for VMWare.
Is there any single application you people are willing to pay for?
Yes, in fact many people working on Free software development (particularly Free OS development) have purchased VMWare. That doesn't change the fact that they'd rather be using Free software for the same thing, and many people are willing to work towards making that a reality.
Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff.
Let's get real. Shrinkwrap software (i.e. proprietary software sold by piece, such as VMWare, Microsoft Office, etc) employs the minority of programmers, but gets the majority of attention. If all shrinkwrap proprietary software companies were to simultaneously go belly up and die, very few professional programmers would be out of a job. Most of us do consulting or custom work. Free software does nothing but help us, it creates jobs and opportunities in the more professional programming positions.
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This is to correct a factual error in my post. I referred to characters 223 for open curly double quotes, 224 for close curly double quotes and 222 for open curly single quotes. I had forgotten that the method I was using to find out the codes reported the number in octal, not decimal. The real numbers are 147, 148 and 146, respectively.
As a biproduct, they don't match the German S, Thorn, or accented a; rather, they fall in a block of numbers that is reserved for use as control characters. Under the right circumstances, who knows what a terminal might interpret them as.
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Yes, ActiveX is an adequate solution for applets on homogenous, Windows-only, Intel-only intranets. OTOH, few places are like that, most places I've worked have had at least one employee who insisted on having their Mac, and ActiveX doesn't work on the Macintosh's IE version. Also, with all the new non-Windows technology coming out, do you really want to be forced to stay with Windows just to support your legacy ActiveX programming efforts.
As for preventing IE from using the special characters, I know in Word you can turn off SmartQuotes and other character substitutions, if IE now does SmartQuotes too, I assume you can also turn them off in IE.
Option 2, use Netscape (and refrain from cutting and pasting from Word, Windows Netscape will pass those special characters right along too).
Option 3, use a font that's mapped to ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 rather than Windows Code Page 1252 Latin 1. If you open up the most recent version of Charcacter Map to look at a font, it should display the font as seven lines of 32 characters each. A box usually indicates an undefined character. A true ISO 8859 font would have that middle line all boxes, since those codes are reserved for control characters.
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jon_c wrote:
I would like to know exactly what IE has that is not part of the [W3C] standard.
Well, the one that jumps out first, since you use them, is IE's use of SmartQuotes. ActiveX is not only completely non-standard, it is a security hole. IE 5.0 does not have complete CSS or DOM implementations even though those standards have been complete for ages. Its XML implementation violates standard namespace conventions. Granted, Netscape 4.0 is no better when it comes to standards compliance, but Mozilla is.
so from my casual observations, netscape doesn't support as many standards as IE.
Your casual observations do not support your conclusion. Neither Netscape 4 nor IE 5 fully support standards, your "experts" are merely more used to IE's quirks than Netscape's.
And if Microsoft's is "bending" standards into the browser, that would seem like a good thing.
How? Microsoft implementing an IE-only feature only serves to fragment the web into IE and non-IE camps, and helps Microsoft to tie their customers to them more securely. If Microsoft (and Netscape) were to follow the standards better, consumers would have richer web content available to them, with fewer complications. Netscape has repented and is actively working on standards compliance, what is Microsoft doing to better support the standards?
The W3C page
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The problem is a two parter, Microsoft produces non-standard (as per ISO 8859-1) characters in their output, and most non-windows browsers expect standard characters. Netscape on NT generally uses Windows' non-standard fonts as its default, and that is why you have no problem seeing the characters. Try switching to another OS, or even a standard ISO mapped font on Windows, and you'll see the problem.
Most recent Microsoft products use a feature called "Smart Quotes", which converts normal apostrophies, single quotes and double quotes to non-standard characters supposed to represent curly single and double quotes. If you view his post carefully, you will see that it does not use ISO 8859-1 characters, nor does it use the entity names. It uses character #223 for open curly double quotes, character #224 for close curly double quotes, character #222 for apostrophies. According to the list you referenced, those should be the German sharp S, lowercase a with an accent grave, and a capital Thorn, respectively.
If Microsoft were following the standards, it would have either:
* Left the quotes and apostrophies alone; or
* Used the HTML 4.0 tags ‘, ’, “ and ”, as needed.
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Justin, you probably should put an update on the story as well, perhaps pointing to this one. That way people searching through the archives later won't get confused if they just find the older story.
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I don't care if Novel is doing it, or disgruntled ex-employees; I will be happy to see NDS available as Free Software. Certainly Novell has no reason to keep the NDS client software closed. Opening the NetWare and NDS clients could only serve to increase their market penetration.
Freeing the NDS server would require some serious reworking of Novell's business model, so I'd be more surprised to see that open. Let's just wait and see what happens.
I for one, will happily use TRG's GPL'ed software, now that I know they exist. They need to get out more, I've been searching for Free Netware-Linux interoperability solutions for six months now and never came across them.
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Wouldn't the last prime timestamp be 23:59:59 19/11/1999?
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ska wrote:
I find the comments on the BSDish license promoting (a) fork interesting but underdeveloped.
The article doesn't say the BSD license is more prone to forking than the GPL, but it does comment on the fork from 386BSD to FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/BSDi. It says that fork is stable because of the different focuses of the different forks. GPL programs are just as likely or unlikely to have forks which persist due to such differences in focus.
Note BSDi in the above list, however. It points out one reason to fork that BSD permits but the GPL doesn't, license change. If someone wants to fork a project because they want to distribute their modifications with more license restrictions than the original, BSD allows it and GPL doesn't.
[Disclaimer: I am not saying that either BSD or GPL are better because of this difference, only that this is a notable difference]
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humphrm wrote:
I don't disagree with you philosophically, but take Red Hat (please!): RPMs, directories in different places, etc. etc. Granted, not "kernel" mods, but "different" -- and significantly different (IMHO) than any other Linux distro. Yet,
nobody but nobody has adopted their modifications.
Other than Mandrake, Macmillan, LinuxPPC, and a horde of other distributions. Last I checked, the LSB project has determined that RPM will be the standard file format for Linux packaging. That's why Debian is working on becoming less package-format dependant.
I'm not a kernel geek, but I'd be willing to bet that there are kernel differences too.
Red Hat generally ships its kernel with the AC patches compiled in. Most of the elements of the AC patches find their way into the main kernel tree eventually.
e.g. you can't be a Debian admin and just walk off the street and admin a Red Hat box.
It's certainly easier to go between the various Linux distros than it is to go between the various commercial Unixes. I had little problem going from Slackware to Red Hat, personally. I don't see how a Debian->Red Hat or Red Hat->Debian migration would be harder than that, likely it will be easier.
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If I recall, there was a court ruling that indicated that making copy of software for archive purposes qualified as "fair use", and was therefore legal. Part of the reasoning behind the ruling was the fragility and unreliability of the floppy disks used to distribute software. I'm not sure if the same ruling would hold for software distributed by CD, and I'm pretty sure it would not hold for entertainment distributed by DVD.
On the other hand, I am not a lawyer, but I feel that the main argument for legality is a strong one. DeCSS is designed to enable private viewing of legally purchased DVD's, and the fact that it can be adapted to enable illegal copying of copyrighted materials is an incidental side effect and does not render the software illegal. Furthermore, it was reverse engineered in a country whose laws explicitly allow reverse engineering for interoperability purposes (i.e. making your DVD-Video work with Linux).
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