It only matters that the U.S marketed it and brought it to the mass public. Without the market push, this shit will just be another protocol rotting in someone's bunker.
I agree with you, that's my point. However, the best marketing for the Internet was definitely its most successfull and best-known application: the Web. Listen, as an European, I would be *against* unilateral european control of the DNS root zone. I think ICANN could remain, but should be under ITU's command. Slashdotters seem to forget the wrong doings of the ICANN in the past. ICANN has done few good things (e.g, make VeriSign remove its wildcards or ensure domain owners have proper contact information), however look at its other actions and past news (e.g, its settlement with VeriSign for.com &.net till 2012 is just a shame (as member of the Internet community, we can and must contact ICANN to refuse the settlement, there is an open forum)). Remember "ICANN - You Can't"? ICANN hasn't the shoulders to hold against major companies like VeriSign, that's why it should be managed by ITU, free of any commercial pressure (or, at least, as free as we can get).
I just love those Slashdot postings:) "I know more than you, you said there was three different colors for apples, while there are at least 5, see the wikipedia reference on the apple fruit to know more!".
I wasn't trying to make an history lesson. Thanks for your concern. By the way (and I take it you are American), would you be here today if European hadn't RE-(you have it)-discovered America? Or maybe you are a so-called "Native American" (and even then, you wouldn't be here. And even if I'm in Europe, I certainly wouldn't be here either).
On mathematics and algorithmics history, you may want to check this or that. It's not always about WHO discovered something, but sometimes also about WHO brought back the discovery to other future scientists. The same thing applies to computer history.
Anyway history was definitely not my point in my previous message. I just am bored with all those "the Internet must remain american because DARPA is" postings that are, I think, totally flawed logic. And yes, there was some humor inside.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the US Department of Defense (through DARPA) created the internet. We invested millions and built the infrastructure that makes it possible for people like Tim Berners-Lee to create worthwhile applications (WWW) that ride on top of it. You don't like it? Tough. Create your own root and use it instead
Oh. You wanna play that game? The computer was designed by Alan Turing, so without Europeans, DARPA wouldn't have invented Internet. And mathematics were largely invented by Greeks and Arabs.
And America was discovered by Europeans! And we all evolved from apes!
That's really a wild guess (and a wrong one;)). I have hesitated to submit the story myself a few days ago and I should have because this summary is (once again) very misleading (but I'm getting accustomed).
The DADVSI law project is really the adaptation of the EUCD European directive, which is itself the european DMCA. Yeah, we can thank our european leaders who enjoy copying stupid american laws like DMCA and SW patents... Anyway..
While keeping all the badness of DMCA (forbidden reverse engineering, etc.), there's something more: if your software allows DRMs to be circumvented, then it is illegal. The problem with Free Software is that, by nature, you can change it, so DRMs could always be circumvented. So the "obvious" solution to those RIAA-like (SACEM & co) fuckers is to make them illegal.
There's nothing about "french culture" here, really, and please, French people don't have much in common with Quebeckers (I'm seeing many analogies that are totally out of place). When they (i.e: SACEM & co) talk about culture, they talk about Hollywood movies and the latest Madonna hit just as much as french movies & music. It's just an anti-piracy measure.
The problem is that their lobby is strong. They just are the same RIAA-like bastards... they should shoot themselves, the world would be better off.
Not much to add, as a french free software developper, you can imagine I'm quite angry at them (and at our government) right now (and I've been for some time... if only it could be avoided like software patents, but I have very little faith here).
And you are a conspiracy theorist. Check my post earlier: Free.fr is just an ISP offering free hosting, the Website creator just used the domain name to create a pseudo "vanity host". Nothing wrong. Quite funny, in fact, who would ever pay for Mandrake tips anyway?:)
Free.fr is a French ISP offering free web hosting (up to 1 GB, one of the first free PHP/MYSQL host company here), free mails, free dial-up (which was their main business few years ago).. Well pretty much everything free except their excellent ADSL2+ (24 Mbps) offer which costs 30 euros (and comes with tons of other goodies like free phone/VoIP and ADSL TV, a static IP and a custom reverse DNS and.. and.. and much more). These guys rock: they only use OSS (mainly Linux powered) and provide us with their "best effort": if a new technology comes they'll offer it to every subscriber without any more condition; my bandwidth changed from 20 to 24Mbps recently and I didn't have to sign another contract or to do anything. I know a few techies from the company (we used to lurk on IRC) and they all are free software fanatics. Free provides official support for OS X and Linux, and their ADSL2+ + TV + phone modem (the "Freebox") runs Linux.
On the other side, the website http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/ is only an hosted website, it has nothing to do afaik with Free itself, while the Mandriva (and Debian, and pretty much every major distro) mirrors are managed on the official ftp.free.fr FTP server by Free's team.
So yeah Free rocks, but this website is only an hosted website (please note: to get an account you must be a French citizen, they send you a request by traditional mail, but they don't put any ad on your website and their bandwidth is huge, so they couldn't freely allow everyone).
Btw, they're already starting WiMax experimentations and installations, it should be available next year or so:). We used to struggle to get a decent connection, and now France seems a good place for Internet connectivity. Talking 'bout Japan and Tokyo? Wait: in Paris (15th arr.) too, they have optic fiber (100Mbps symmetrical) for 50 euros a month (and with TV and VoIP once again):)
At first, I agreed with you. But thinking a bit more thouroughly, I came to another idea. One of the principles of the Web is that it is composed of very simple components which work great together. A webserver isn't doing much: it understands HTTP (a protocol that has nothing to do with contents, except replying their type), then delivers the requested contents.
Who is to decide the standard under which the contents are? Is it the W3C? I don't think so. First, the W3C only issues recommandations. I am an advocate of open standards and W3C validation of websites, however I think one should follow the XHTML standard if the website pages are in XHTML, and so on. But what if I decide to make a XUL application?
XUL is an open standard, but it isn't a W3C standard. Yet I can implement a Java XUL back-end on a cellphone (OK the battery will last 2 mins but that's not the point;)), upload a XUL application on my server and then on my phone use my application as if it was local.
XUL is XML so it defines its namespace (an URI), and should be self-validating (with the help of a DTD or XML Schemas). XML is a W3C standard. So would the.mobi validating agent allow XUL applications? Who are they to decide what I put on my webserver?
OK this is Slashdot so let's talk about Microsoft. I often see posts like "When you [FOSS people] do [something], it's right but when MS does it they are evil" and it pisses me off because it's an extreme simplication of the problem and it's a FALSE statement in a cartesian reasoning. If we reverse the problem and think XAML instead of XUL, to me, it's bad of course, but only ethically: Microsoft has perfectly the right to make their website in XAML I think, I would just find it wrong because XAML isn't an open standard (and if they license it, they will make sure it's not GPL compliant to piss us off;)) and because I am an open standards advocate. Yet who are/am WE/I to decide that MSFT shouldn't push XAML? To me it sure looks like a good business move, perfectly in line with their previous actions.
However, when MS changes HTML or parses HTML badly so that they can push web developpers to make non standard-compliant websites, this is definitely wrong both ethically and technically (and as we saw, legally). This is their "Embrace & Extend" technique and we all (I guess) hate it. If they had forked HTML and called their shitty HTML "MSHTML-4" it would have been less of a problem, but since HTML was a loosy language and that nobody used the DTD declaration, we arrived where we are now in a Web where 1/10 websites are standard compliant, and with advocates like us who tell everyone that validating on W3C is a must. In a Web where developping a new Web browser is one of the hardest tasks because of the shitty undocumented MS HTML.
I understand that.mobi wants to avoid that to happen again, especially when their is no real OS monopoly on the cellphones market yet (so the web browsers shares may be more equal). But I don't think enforcing standards is the solution, or if they do it, they'd better do it right; even the W3C validator doesn't fully understand all of the standards, and Content-types should be checked so that if I decide to invent my own standard (may it be or not XML based), if I make it open (that's an ideological requirement MS wouldn't agree with:)), they should allow my website.
Well I'm over here, there's a lot to say but I'm not sure it's useful (and the more we say, the more we may be misunderstood:)). I hope I made my point: open standards are good, automatic enforcement is bad (well it may not be bad, but I'm pretty sure the validation robots will by crappy and limited so it is bad..)
Part of the reason the nets a mess now is because its so cheap and easy to register domains now.
It's also why it's so successful, and why I and others can have my/our own domain name without it being a luxery. Though I understand some TLDs may be more expensive (e.g,.mobi) or restricted (e.g,.museum), it is important that having a domain under the main gTLDs (ie:.com,.net &.org) remain cheap.
I can ignore crap, but I would miss all the great things the web has provided thanks to the low cost of getting a domain. And even if it isn't required to have its domain name to have a website, free hosting these days has nothing to do with free hosting in the 90's (e.g, it's full of ads). And of course, the Web is only an application among many, I use my domain name for other purposes (e.g, having my Jabber server).
The french Minitel was a system very much Web-alike in the 80's, but it failed because it was not open and the cost of joining was way too high (it still exists but almost everything on the Minitel has been ported to the Web now). The Minitel failure isn't that it didn't work, it's that it didn't expand (to other countries or other usages). That it didn't evolve. That's the very opposite of the Web which is in constant evolution and expansion. So we all regret the good old times when the Web wasn't abused (in the original sense) but I prefer the Web as it is today (i.e. everything imaginable, crappy or not, is on the Web) than a Web where only privilegees can get their domain.
Are you sure it's not satire? Not being from America I never heard of this "reverand" nor his church and sayings. I just checked his site and I'm ROFLMAO... Check this or that one haha, the "WBC" websites must have been done by some 14 years old or I don't know:). Anyway it's even funnier than satire (how do they think they'll fight homosexuality by being THAT extreme? God bless America and the first amendment! =))
So you mean like creating an intelligent form to have sex with? Now I don't know what the Christians will say about it, but I guess it would have huge success here on/.;)
I get it is a joke (at least partially). Certainly, I too miss the good old days of the free and ads-free Internet (and the early days of the Web). However, with all these idiots came good people too, and for example, the Free Software movement wouldn't be where it is without the Web, which is still an extraordinary medium (people got to discover so many things thanks to the Web). An the idiots would have come anyway. I think the Web is made so that you can choose what you see and read, so we can ignore idiots, but get insight from people who wouldn't have come on a comfy but reserved to a pseudo-elite Internet. It's much more difficult to ignore stupidity on TV and get only insight, without shutting it off completly.
It will prevent unilateral political choices, but as every Slashdotter should know by now [wikipedia.org] "managing" the Internet is not possible. Only the DNS system can be controlled by a central authority. Censorship only works if every single country in the world agrees to crack down on ISPs hosting the stuff to censor. This will only work with child porn and (hopefully) spam.
And you found out by reading my message that I knew, else I wouldn't have been talking about the root DNS servers. Anyway that was a shortcut to speak of the Internet control, of course. The problem here is that people seem to forget how bad ICANN management was/is. The only thing they did great was their battle with VeriSign, but VeriSign did sue them. They don't have the shoulders to keep the DNS system clean. That's why I'm all for an ITU managed ICANN. Nothing would change, except that countries could manage their ccTLD and gTLDs registries would be decided without polical affiliation or money (see VeriSign money in Bush campaign) but because it's the obvious choice for the public interest.
All the "Internet is American" post push us away from the debate. The computer was designed by an english (Alan Turing), and the first computer was french! Even if people don't know. And we would be nowhere without Greeks and Arabs for their maths. The Internet is an international achievement. It seems normal it is internationally managed.
New flash! US lawmakers want to keep US Internet control...! As do US administration and government! And for all those "ARPA is American", well, the Web is European. I wonder where the Internet would be today without the Web as we know it (there would be some kind of replacement, for sure, but would it be open and free? And maybe it would just have appeared).
Get your facts straight. The Internet is an international progress and profits to everyone. I haven't participated a "DNS control" topic yet, but I'm posting now since I find it really childish that American slashdotters are so reluctant to ONLY let countries manage their own ccTLD, and let ITU manage the gTLD (for the better interest of everyone, since for now the Bush administration is completely corrupted by VeriSign for.com and.net TLDs.. And we all remember the dreadly wildcard).
The ITU managing root DNS servers doesn't mean that the U.N will get to decide everything and that Chinese will have a say. And even if they did, why not? The U.N. privilegdes democratic thoughts, e.g Free Software (FOSS) is recognized by UNESCO, an U.N. branch? ITU has already managed discussions on IPv6 and is a very prominent actor in the world of networking and communication.
All in all, the US letting the U.N. manage the Internet won't change what we love in the Internet, but it will prevent bad political choices (e.g VeriSign having gTLDs that are supposedly ran as Public Service), and it is just the way it should be. And stop those redundants "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's not about fixing it, it's about making things equal. The Internet was made by all (maybe not by country still in development who couldn't possibily help, but does it mean we should say fuck to Africa when it wants to have some input in the future of our great *HUMAN* network?). Oh, forget it, Slashdotters are sometimes so conservative I don't know why I'm posting. Certainly going to burn some karma and getting tons of replies of how wrong I am and how we should just cut the transatlantic optic fibers so we won't bother each others anymore. Sorry, but I enjoy the American Internet. And I enjoy the European Internet. And without those peerings, it would feel like cold war. Think about it: Back in 1991, Linux would have had to be sent to the US by traditionnal mail (yeah, it was developped in Finland). Now that would have been bad for all of us, wouldn't it?
I don't care much about the issue. The US have not managed the root DNS servers too badly, except for the VeriSign crap (but the.org is now managed by SPI, a great German ISP really "for the public interest"). So now let's get a big hug;) And hope nothing bad happens, I'd hate not to be able to read Slashdot, and for sure, everyone here would miss my INSIGHT;) (HAHAHAHA).
Well you can. I do run my own Jabber server, my postfix server and my bind server, and apache2 and many others. Oops. Replying to an AC/is/ irrelevant.;)
A missing '>' has made a paragraph invisible.. Here it is.:)
(x) About encryption, there are four things : (1) making your message between your PC and your server safe (ie TLS), (2) HAVING your message between the two servers safe (3) HAVING your message between your correspondant safe (4) making your message between you and your correspondant safe. You can chose (1), (2) should be likely soon (s2s with TLS), (3) is not up to you at all, but (4) is client side, on both side, and safe. The point of knowing whether your correspondant has the encryption enabled is really up to client unification and respect of the upcoming JEPs.
I agree on some points, I'll answer on those I think the C/S architecture of the current Jabber network should still prevail.
(x) Take the DNS system. Everyone can have his own DNS server and be sure that if there is an IP path to the others relevant servers (ie root servers and descending servers given the domain you try to resolve), you can still resolve any DNS query.
However, most lambda users won't ever use their own name daemon. They will simply get the one allocated by DHCP, which is their provider DNS server. It's bandwidth efficient because the ISP DNS server caches requests and can answer rapidly. And it's your ISP server, so you should have a good latency.
Anyway, it happens that your ISP DNS server crashes. At those time, you won't be able to resolve DNS but will still be able to use networked apps since you can still be connected.
Yet we don't disregard the system (and make everyone use a DNS server instead of DNS client with ISP DNS server), first because we can save ton of bandwidth by caching (cache is usually cleaned at restart) but mainly because it's SIMPLER that way. We push the complexity towards the server, and keep simplicity on the client. Thus it's quite easy to implement a DNS client while programming a decent full-featured DNS server is *some work*.
The solution here is to add redundancy. Your ISP has many DNS servers and if one fails, you'll use another.
The same goes with mail servers, your ISP mail server, and MX DNS entries in case of server problem. So having the Jabber network was a way to push the complexity towards the server and make it easy for us Jabber developpers to implement clients, scripts, et al. When you engage a discussion with a Jabber user who's on another Jabber server, if you both are on a frequented server, there's good chance there is *already* a link going between them thus no negociation needed, the message goes fast. It limits the number of concurrent links Jabber servers have because the number of Jabber servers is quite low.
(x) Anonymity is actually quite a cool feature but mainly because it makes Jabber a cool platform. The JID can become "your online self": it adverts of your presence those you allow, and is basically the only thing we know about you at first. The we can enquire your server to know more, but if you told him more. I guess you are waiting for a full IPv6 Internet, given your remark on NAT, and I am on the same side here. However, we are not there yet. And IPs are mostly dynamically affected (talking about end ISP users here of course). The JID is a wrapper of your IP. It makes your address static to the rest of the world. Of course I'm talking about a world using Jabber as a back-end for new yet-to-come services. ie video games using your JID as your identity, thus people you play with can contact you, and given the number of FOSS Jabber libraries out there, gives developpers an easy way to implement a chat in the game. But the *main* point is that you log ON your Jabber server, and your Jabber server TELLS the game server that you are who you pretend to be, and that you can initiate game. Then you can initiate actual "peer to peer" connection with the server. No it's not Passport.NET, but it's a way to identify yourself and advertise of your online presence, and it's distributed. Your Jabber server only knows what you tell him. So here, you're hiding your identity to the game server at first, but then a "true" connection is established. But it's because a game is bandwidth consumming. Some services over Jabber could still use Jabber as a transport when those services should ignore what your IP is.
Well, I honestly don't care much about anonymity either. I have a static IP so I think I am not anonymous anywhere, and Google can pretty much trace me;). However there's a small network here so from one IP there are few users.
What I care about is wrapping your identity in the JID. I think it's something great. IP should ide
Ok. Long time IRC user/admin here. And even if I may have agreed with you 5 years earlier, now I absolutely don't:).
I have coded bots, hacked IRC daemons many times (Unreal or Bahamut), coded my own IRC services (bots that fake themselves as servers to get the full network image). It sucks. It's only hacks. Bad hacks.
We need a protocol which supports extensibility in the first place. Something like XML. Oh, wait, isn't Jabber XML-based?
You don't "hack" Jabber. Or if you call it hack, it's clever, academic and well-designed hack which won't break anything else. It's easily extensible with JEPs (Jabber Extension Protocols). It rocks.
Now there's still a huge paradigm shift between IM and Traditional Chat à la IRC. But Jabber supports MUCs (Multi User Chats) which are very IRC-like. I hope someday IRC will remain just as an attraction, a museum for your grandkids "Hey grandpa, did you really chat on something THAT badly designed?"
Don't get me wrong: I love IRC, I have spent years on it, and had good laughs. But it was because of the community, of the general IRC spirit. It must not die. But the protocol is crappy, has tons of weirdness and exceptions, really WRONG word-splitting and is FAR TOO MUCH limited.
It may be a little soon to forget IRC. But I'm working on it. I'm working on making all of us forget IRC:) We need another protocol, because IRC is outdated, but it's stupid to create a brand new protocol when Jabber has everything we need. MUC is the way to go. But it misses the good ol' IRC spirit and population (there are 3 pilgrims on MUC for now). See my message above yours for a good reason. I'm working on eliminating any good reason to remain on IRC.
Jabber is the way to go. It's open, scalable, distributed and simple.
The problem are social connections. People are on MSN because their friends are on MSN. Same for Yahoo!
But who from your contact list/roster, in the first place, came on MSN or Yahoo!? Well, users who were advertised by their Yahoo! account or using the MSN client being shipped with Windows. Compare to "Who made you join ICQ, or IRC". No ads, only because it was the way to go, because some computer techies back then told you it was great (well, it WAS indeed).
Slashdot crowd and others, being [...] computer and technologies aware, should be the first link in each of our own socials network to tell others to go Jabber. Non-techie people should trust us on the technical side: Jabber is way better designed than others major IMs services. The Jabber community, for now, is mainly composed of geeks and free software hobbyists. Let's tell our friends to make the switch. It's a little time consumming the first time, but it's free. Tell them to use GTalk (which should be openly federating soon, even with some restrictions to avoid 'spim'..) or any other Jabber server.
There are tons of great clients for Jabber. Under GNU/Linux, you may try Gajim, Tkabber, Gaim or Psi. Under Mac OS X, Gush, Psi or of course iChat. And for those still under Windows, Miranda, Exodus, Gaim or Psi. Google for them.
And they will soon ALL support the feature you want, just give it some timeMore info
OK I'm a bit late on this story, but maybe some mods will be late too;)
As an IRC admin for few years, I saw many botnet channels. The botnet masters enjoy putting their bots on IRC (on a secret channel) because it's a third party who provides the communication support, IRC is a good message demultiplexer, and they think it's safe since they only log on IRC with a proxy.
They can identify themselves with a given bot by going private (PRIVMSG.ident ) or just on the channel, the PRIVMSG will be sent to every bot. Now 100k bots in a channel is a lot but I have seen 30k already.
The bots had random nicks so we just put a bot of ours with a random nick in the channel, logged everything and then get the login/pass (I guess in this case Dutch police had the login/pass pair from the PCs they seized). Then we looked out for the bot version, looked on the web for commands (usually, the bot masters are script kiddies and just build the bot from an "automatic" builder they download on the web... they wouldn't even build from the sources).
All of the bots I encountered disposed of attacks commands et al, but also a clean removal command. That's what we used.
Now I don't know about the bot in this story, but most likely the botnet masters HAD a mean to contact them all (now is it IRC-like with a big channel, or distributed among the bots à la DNS, I don't know... But even if the removal command isn't here, there's still a way to tell the bot to execute a given binary they download from a given URL).
And I don't think that would really be illegal, remember, the PC owners rarely know they are infected or don't care. They won't know or won't care either if someone removes the bot for them. And if they say something, just sue them since it means they were part of the attack knowingly;). Who would want to be part of the botnet ?:)
Anyway I hope we could shut down more of these networks (and MS should pay for their dismantle since nearly all zombies networks are running Windows).
About your sig, it's not a quote specifically from Jeanne d'Arc. She is said to have told it in her trial, but it is only a widely used french proverb, very often used in songs and poems. It is also found in "Les Fables d'Æsope" (Esope Fables? sp?) which come from ancient Greece (translated to modern french later by Pierre Millot).
To quote Princess Bride, I think it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Emmerder quelqu'un means "bothering someone" in a vulgar way. A literal translation would be "those we throw shit at" (when doing so, French people usually wear gloves):).
Profond here is used as an adverb ("beaucoup"), ie "much".
Anyway "ceux qu'on emmerde" is rather soft compared to "those we say fuck to".
What I meant is that MS won't ever give licensing rights to a GPL'd software. If you discriminate someone, you can't be a standard body.
ISO makes money off standards but everyone can buy them (and the cost is capped afaik). Be sure that MS will never help (and will do everything otherwise in their power) the GPL community (and I mean GPL, because they accept other free licensing terms, they just really *hate* the GPL itself).
As you said, MS doesn't like giving control away, but it has happened a few times, e.g when they wanted to sink Java for C# to take its crown (well if Java ever had a crown, but that's another problem;)). Once they've given control, a free (as in speech, as always:)) implementation can be done but the problem of the patents remain. e.g, they have released the.NET CLR 1 and the C# specs to ECMA and that's what Mono implements. However, nobody's sure of it's perfectly legal on the patents' side and there's no doubt MS will sue them when they think the time is right (just when Mono will go mainstream). They will spread FUD then. So you see, in the FOSS realm everyone rely on the other's good intentions or best interest, and when a company like IBM invests in FOSS for its own selfish needs, we don't reject it 'cause we know they want to hurt MS and make money off FOSS. But in MS's (or SCO's for that matter) case they just want to sink all their competitors, FOSS included.
I say, a standard cannot or shouldn't be a standard if there is any discrimination, and the licensing terms are what MS can't and won't accept, so there is no point tolerating MS formats and protocols. That's why we (must) have an open and better alternative for each of them, with low cost (or none at all) to get the documentation and no cost for implementation (using the trademark, as in Java's case, is yet another matter, but I don't think it's fundamentally wrong).
Finally, I think Java is an open standard as long as Sun documents it and doesn't try to make our task using it or implementing it harder. The Java Community is the standard body and Sun is by design a very influent member of course. We know Sun wants everybody to use, spread and program in Java. MS doesn't want anyone to use their document format, they want everyone to use Word(tm).
Oh yes, I know, that's blasphemy and my karma is now lower than Lucifer's, but if you stop and think for a moment you'll realize that it's the logical and realistic choice.
Then your logic must be flawed. You know MS won't ever release full specs for any of its formats, it could be licensed to big clients (just like their Shared Source program) but NEVER there will be a 100% compliant free implementation. So I fail to see how it could be a standard, the definition you give from the dictionnary is the MAINSTREAM definition and certainly not the one recognized in science or more precisely in the technics (more as in "normalization").
The logical choice is of course OASIS, which has already been recognized as the official document standard in most of European countries, and was compared technically, practically and logically to MS doc by a commission (with people who decided for technical reasons that OASIS was better in most points and rejected MS's bribe yeah).
Still, I don't know how it has evolved, but I remember last february when their was a call for boycott from the FSF against the OASIS Group, regarding their policy towards sw patents. I hope they have/will fix(ed) that but they can't be worse than MS regarding patent abuse or bad patenting policy.
Though I don't find MS fanboys that irritating anymore (it's more that I don't care about MS anymore now that they have a very low impact on my computing life), I don't understand how people can still support them and consider that just because they're the bigger software company they must remain so. And forget excellence.
This thread is old, nobody's gonna read this except maybe you (if you are warned at reply). Anyway...
I think we (as in French people) hate MS as much as the next guy may him be American, Polish or Mexican. And no, we haven't anything against Google, we use Google just like everybody else... It's not because some French charged Google (afaik for "legally" good reasons, may I remind you that each country has its own laws?) that French people aren't big fans of Google.
I know Slashdotters like France jokes (haha stop I surrender!! so funny:P) and I find them amusing, but, damn, you shouldn't be modded insightful. Where is the insight when you just don't know what you're talking about? I don't have anything against you, but more against the stupid moderator who modded you up.
Oh, and you say "France", I guess you'd find clever if I'd consider "America" as a whole, where everyone is happy about the current administration? Let me tell you : you have ~50% pro Bush ~50% against? Same here with our f*cking Government. You find some court trials to be stupid? So do we, but at least our legal system isn't JUST a weapon to get money and sink competition (at least for now... it's changing unfortunately)
American fantasies about France are ridiculous. Come here for some time and have a look for yourself, but stop giving a whole population ideas because a citizen did something on his own. Hint for you: French companies are just like American companies, they care for themselves before caring for their country. When Louis Vuiton attacked Google for putting ads of counterfeits products in the very result of the search "Louis Vuiton", it is a COMPANY who attacked Google. Not France.
As a matter of fact, we love Google, everybody here knows it, everybody uses it, and we don't have the "it's american so it sux" mentality American people think we have.
I doubt you have any good will if you fail to install Linux on such a widely used configuration.
I have a homebuilt ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe AMD system too with a GeForce 4 and it worked out of the box with Debian Sarge. Been using this desktop for 2 years and a half without a single problem, no hanging, no rebooting, works flawlessly, everything is recognized.
If you install Linux "just to see" without any real intent of using it, that's why you fail. Keep a way to check the web, wipe all your Windows installation and install Debian. You will have no choice but to get things to work properly. Nothing is hard to get working, you just have to change your mindset to get the logic behind everyday Linux use. Hell, I couldn't go back to Windows, I know it sounds a bit of a cliché, but I really find Windows crappy, bloated and barely usable and you would certainly think alike once you find yourself comfy on GNU/Linux. Ideologically, and as a CS student, I would also now be ashamed of using a Microsoft product (ideologically) and Windows, given its fundamental design flaws (Windows has many things wrong in a CS angle).
Oh and btw, X worked out of the box, too. I just tweaked it a little, but that's my own choice. A choice you don't really have on Windows, given the limited settings of the display manager.
So is Linux for everyone? Yes. But it's not to be administered by anyone. My mother couldn't install Windows. She couldn't add a printer under Windows. Now it's been 1 year she's under Debian and she still don't do those things, but what she could do before (Mail, Web, ie the most common uses for private users), she can do now. And I don't have to worry 'bout 0-day exploits and worms. I apt-get regulary and that's fine.
Microsoft tried to demonstrate that everyone can be his own PC admin. On the contrary, they gave us a proof by contradiction. Look at worms, botnet, spam. Microsoft can be held responsible for much of these. Most people don't care, that's fine. But I do, so at least in my entourage, we are Microsoft-free.
PS: we can't say everything in one message, nothing is perfect, and Linux isn't. Windows may not that bad for some uses either.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter who created it.
.com & .net till 2012 is just a shame (as member of the Internet community, we can and must contact ICANN to refuse the settlement, there is an open forum)). Remember "ICANN - You Can't"? ICANN hasn't the shoulders to hold against major companies like VeriSign, that's why it should be managed by ITU, free of any commercial pressure (or, at least, as free as we can get).
It only matters that the U.S marketed it and brought it to the mass public. Without the market push, this shit will just be another protocol rotting in someone's bunker.
I agree with you, that's my point. However, the best marketing for the Internet was definitely its most successfull and best-known application: the Web. Listen, as an European, I would be *against* unilateral european control of the DNS root zone. I think ICANN could remain, but should be under ITU's command. Slashdotters seem to forget the wrong doings of the ICANN in the past. ICANN has done few good things (e.g, make VeriSign remove its wildcards or ensure domain owners have proper contact information), however look at its other actions and past news (e.g, its settlement with VeriSign for
I just love those Slashdot postings :) "I know more than you, you said there was three different colors for apples, while there are at least 5, see the wikipedia reference on the apple fruit to know more!".
I wasn't trying to make an history lesson. Thanks for your concern. By the way (and I take it you are American), would you be here today if European hadn't RE-(you have it)-discovered America? Or maybe you are a so-called "Native American" (and even then, you wouldn't be here. And even if I'm in Europe, I certainly wouldn't be here either).
On mathematics and algorithmics history, you may want to check this or that. It's not always about WHO discovered something, but sometimes also about WHO brought back the discovery to other future scientists. The same thing applies to computer history.
Anyway history was definitely not my point in my previous message. I just am bored with all those "the Internet must remain american because DARPA is" postings that are, I think, totally flawed logic. And yes, there was some humor inside.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the US Department of Defense (through DARPA) created the internet. We invested millions and built the infrastructure that makes it possible for people like Tim Berners-Lee to create worthwhile applications (WWW) that ride on top of it. You don't like it? Tough. Create your own root and use it instead
Oh. You wanna play that game? The computer was designed by Alan Turing, so without Europeans, DARPA wouldn't have invented Internet. And mathematics were largely invented by Greeks and Arabs.
And America was discovered by Europeans! And we all evolved from apes!
I say, the Internet should be run by apes.
Hail to the conservatists.
That's really a wild guess (and a wrong one ;)). I have hesitated to submit the story myself a few days ago and I should have because this summary is (once again) very misleading (but I'm getting accustomed).
The DADVSI law project is really the adaptation of the EUCD European directive, which is itself the european DMCA. Yeah, we can thank our european leaders who enjoy copying stupid american laws like DMCA and SW patents... Anyway..
While keeping all the badness of DMCA (forbidden reverse engineering, etc.), there's something more: if your software allows DRMs to be circumvented, then it is illegal. The problem with Free Software is that, by nature, you can change it, so DRMs could always be circumvented. So the "obvious" solution to those RIAA-like (SACEM & co) fuckers is to make them illegal.
There's nothing about "french culture" here, really, and please, French people don't have much in common with Quebeckers (I'm seeing many analogies that are totally out of place). When they (i.e: SACEM & co) talk about culture, they talk about Hollywood movies and the latest Madonna hit just as much as french movies & music. It's just an anti-piracy measure.
The problem is that their lobby is strong. They just are the same RIAA-like bastards... they should shoot themselves, the world would be better off.
Not much to add, as a french free software developper, you can imagine I'm quite angry at them (and at our government) right now (and I've been for some time... if only it could be avoided like software patents, but I have very little faith here).
And you are a conspiracy theorist. Check my post earlier: Free.fr is just an ISP offering free hosting, the Website creator just used the domain name to create a pseudo "vanity host". Nothing wrong. Quite funny, in fact, who would ever pay for Mandrake tips anyway? :)
Free.fr is a French ISP offering free web hosting (up to 1 GB, one of the first free PHP/MYSQL host company here), free mails, free dial-up (which was their main business few years ago).. Well pretty much everything free except their excellent ADSL2+ (24 Mbps) offer which costs 30 euros (and comes with tons of other goodies like free phone/VoIP and ADSL TV, a static IP and a custom reverse DNS and.. and .. and much more). These guys rock: they only use OSS (mainly Linux powered) and provide us with their "best effort": if a new technology comes they'll offer it to every subscriber without any more condition; my bandwidth changed from 20 to 24Mbps recently and I didn't have to sign another contract or to do anything. I know a few techies from the company (we used to lurk on IRC) and they all are free software fanatics. Free provides official support for OS X and Linux, and their ADSL2+ + TV + phone modem (the "Freebox") runs Linux.
:). We used to struggle to get a decent connection, and now France seems a good place for Internet connectivity. Talking 'bout Japan and Tokyo? Wait: in Paris (15th arr.) too, they have optic fiber (100Mbps symmetrical) for 50 euros a month (and with TV and VoIP once again) :)
On the other side, the website http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/ is only an hosted website, it has nothing to do afaik with Free itself, while the Mandriva (and Debian, and pretty much every major distro) mirrors are managed on the official ftp.free.fr FTP server by Free's team.
So yeah Free rocks, but this website is only an hosted website (please note: to get an account you must be a French citizen, they send you a request by traditional mail, but they don't put any ad on your website and their bandwidth is huge, so they couldn't freely allow everyone).
Btw, they're already starting WiMax experimentations and installations, it should be available next year or so
At first, I agreed with you. But thinking a bit more thouroughly, I came to another idea. One of the principles of the Web is that it is composed of very simple components which work great together. A webserver isn't doing much: it understands HTTP (a protocol that has nothing to do with contents, except replying their type), then delivers the requested contents.
;)), upload a XUL application on my server and then on my phone use my application as if it was local.
.mobi validating agent allow XUL applications? Who are they to decide what I put on my webserver?
;)) and because I am an open standards advocate. Yet who are/am WE/I to decide that MSFT shouldn't push XAML? To me it sure looks like a good business move, perfectly in line with their previous actions.
.mobi wants to avoid that to happen again, especially when their is no real OS monopoly on the cellphones market yet (so the web browsers shares may be more equal). But I don't think enforcing standards is the solution, or if they do it, they'd better do it right; even the W3C validator doesn't fully understand all of the standards, and Content-types should be checked so that if I decide to invent my own standard (may it be or not XML based), if I make it open (that's an ideological requirement MS wouldn't agree with :)), they should allow my website.
:)). I hope I made my point: open standards are good, automatic enforcement is bad (well it may not be bad, but I'm pretty sure the validation robots will by crappy and limited so it is bad..)
Who is to decide the standard under which the contents are? Is it the W3C? I don't think so. First, the W3C only issues recommandations. I am an advocate of open standards and W3C validation of websites, however I think one should follow the XHTML standard if the website pages are in XHTML, and so on. But what if I decide to make a XUL application?
XUL is an open standard, but it isn't a W3C standard. Yet I can implement a Java XUL back-end on a cellphone (OK the battery will last 2 mins but that's not the point
XUL is XML so it defines its namespace (an URI), and should be self-validating (with the help of a DTD or XML Schemas). XML is a W3C standard. So would the
OK this is Slashdot so let's talk about Microsoft. I often see posts like "When you [FOSS people] do [something], it's right but when MS does it they are evil" and it pisses me off because it's an extreme simplication of the problem and it's a FALSE statement in a cartesian reasoning. If we reverse the problem and think XAML instead of XUL, to me, it's bad of course, but only ethically: Microsoft has perfectly the right to make their website in XAML I think, I would just find it wrong because XAML isn't an open standard (and if they license it, they will make sure it's not GPL compliant to piss us off
However, when MS changes HTML or parses HTML badly so that they can push web developpers to make non standard-compliant websites, this is definitely wrong both ethically and technically (and as we saw, legally). This is their "Embrace & Extend" technique and we all (I guess) hate it. If they had forked HTML and called their shitty HTML "MSHTML-4" it would have been less of a problem, but since HTML was a loosy language and that nobody used the DTD declaration, we arrived where we are now in a Web where 1/10 websites are standard compliant, and with advocates like us who tell everyone that validating on W3C is a must. In a Web where developping a new Web browser is one of the hardest tasks because of the shitty undocumented MS HTML.
I understand that
Well I'm over here, there's a lot to say but I'm not sure it's useful (and the more we say, the more we may be misunderstood
Part of the reason the nets a mess now is because its so cheap and easy to register domains now.
.mobi) or restricted (e.g, .museum), it is important that having a domain under the main gTLDs (ie: .com, .net & .org) remain cheap.
It's also why it's so successful, and why I and others can have my/our own domain name without it being a luxery. Though I understand some TLDs may be more expensive (e.g,
I can ignore crap, but I would miss all the great things the web has provided thanks to the low cost of getting a domain. And even if it isn't required to have its domain name to have a website, free hosting these days has nothing to do with free hosting in the 90's (e.g, it's full of ads). And of course, the Web is only an application among many, I use my domain name for other purposes (e.g, having my Jabber server).
The french Minitel was a system very much Web-alike in the 80's, but it failed because it was not open and the cost of joining was way too high (it still exists but almost everything on the Minitel has been ported to the Web now). The Minitel failure isn't that it didn't work, it's that it didn't expand (to other countries or other usages). That it didn't evolve. That's the very opposite of the Web which is in constant evolution and expansion. So we all regret the good old times when the Web wasn't abused (in the original sense) but I prefer the Web as it is today (i.e. everything imaginable, crappy or not, is on the Web) than a Web where only privilegees can get their domain.
Are you sure it's not satire? Not being from America I never heard of this "reverand" nor his church and sayings. I just checked his site and I'm ROFLMAO... Check this or that one haha, the "WBC" websites must have been done by some 14 years old or I don't know :). Anyway it's even funnier than satire (how do they think they'll fight homosexuality by being THAT extreme? God bless America and the first amendment! =))
sex. it's not only difficult, but fun!
/. ;)
So you mean like creating an intelligent form to have sex with? Now I don't know what the Christians will say about it, but I guess it would have huge success here on
I get it is a joke (at least partially). Certainly, I too miss the good old days of the free and ads-free Internet (and the early days of the Web). However, with all these idiots came good people too, and for example, the Free Software movement wouldn't be where it is without the Web, which is still an extraordinary medium (people got to discover so many things thanks to the Web). An the idiots would have come anyway. I think the Web is made so that you can choose what you see and read, so we can ignore idiots, but get insight from people who wouldn't have come on a comfy but reserved to a pseudo-elite Internet. It's much more difficult to ignore stupidity on TV and get only insight, without shutting it off completly.
It will prevent unilateral political choices, but as every Slashdotter should know by now [wikipedia.org] "managing" the Internet is not possible. Only the DNS system can be controlled by a central authority. Censorship only works if every single country in the world agrees to crack down on ISPs hosting the stuff to censor. This will only work with child porn and (hopefully) spam.
And you found out by reading my message that I knew, else I wouldn't have been talking about the root DNS servers. Anyway that was a shortcut to speak of the Internet control, of course. The problem here is that people seem to forget how bad ICANN management was/is. The only thing they did great was their battle with VeriSign, but VeriSign did sue them. They don't have the shoulders to keep the DNS system clean. That's why I'm all for an ITU managed ICANN. Nothing would change, except that countries could manage their ccTLD and gTLDs registries would be decided without polical affiliation or money (see VeriSign money in Bush campaign) but because it's the obvious choice for the public interest.
All the "Internet is American" post push us away from the debate. The computer was designed by an english (Alan Turing), and the first computer was french! Even if people don't know. And we would be nowhere without Greeks and Arabs for their maths. The Internet is an international achievement. It seems normal it is internationally managed.
New flash! US lawmakers want to keep US Internet control...! As do US administration and government! And for all those "ARPA is American", well, the Web is European. I wonder where the Internet would be today without the Web as we know it (there would be some kind of replacement, for sure, but would it be open and free? And maybe it would just have appeared).
.com and .net TLDs.. And we all remember the dreadly wildcard).
.org is now managed by SPI, a great German ISP really "for the public interest"). So now let's get a big hug ;) And hope nothing bad happens, I'd hate not to be able to read Slashdot, and for sure, everyone here would miss my INSIGHT ;) (HAHAHAHA).
Get your facts straight. The Internet is an international progress and profits to everyone. I haven't participated a "DNS control" topic yet, but I'm posting now since I find it really childish that American slashdotters are so reluctant to ONLY let countries manage their own ccTLD, and let ITU manage the gTLD (for the better interest of everyone, since for now the Bush administration is completely corrupted by VeriSign for
The ITU managing root DNS servers doesn't mean that the U.N will get to decide everything and that Chinese will have a say. And even if they did, why not? The U.N. privilegdes democratic thoughts, e.g Free Software (FOSS) is recognized by UNESCO, an U.N. branch? ITU has already managed discussions on IPv6 and is a very prominent actor in the world of networking and communication.
All in all, the US letting the U.N. manage the Internet won't change what we love in the Internet, but it will prevent bad political choices (e.g VeriSign having gTLDs that are supposedly ran as Public Service), and it is just the way it should be. And stop those redundants "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's not about fixing it, it's about making things equal. The Internet was made by all (maybe not by country still in development who couldn't possibily help, but does it mean we should say fuck to Africa when it wants to have some input in the future of our great *HUMAN* network?). Oh, forget it, Slashdotters are sometimes so conservative I don't know why I'm posting. Certainly going to burn some karma and getting tons of replies of how wrong I am and how we should just cut the transatlantic optic fibers so we won't bother each others anymore. Sorry, but I enjoy the American Internet. And I enjoy the European Internet. And without those peerings, it would feel like cold war. Think about it: Back in 1991, Linux would have had to be sent to the US by traditionnal mail (yeah, it was developped in Finland). Now that would have been bad for all of us, wouldn't it?
I don't care much about the issue. The US have not managed the root DNS servers too badly, except for the VeriSign crap (but the
Well you can. I do run my own Jabber server, my postfix server and my bind server, and apache2 and many others. Oops. Replying to an AC /is/ irrelevant. ;)
A missing '>' has made a paragraph invisible.. Here it is. :)
(x) About encryption, there are four things : (1) making your message between your PC and your server safe (ie TLS), (2) HAVING your message between the two servers safe (3) HAVING your message between your correspondant safe (4) making your message between you and your correspondant safe. You can chose (1), (2) should be likely soon (s2s with TLS), (3) is not up to you at all, but (4) is client side, on both side, and safe. The point of knowing whether your correspondant has the encryption enabled is really up to client unification and respect of the upcoming JEPs.
Hi there
;). However there's a small network here so from one IP there are few users.
I agree on some points, I'll answer on those I think the C/S architecture of the current Jabber network should still prevail.
(x) Take the DNS system. Everyone can have his own DNS server and be sure that if there is an IP path to the others relevant servers (ie root servers and descending servers given the domain you try to resolve), you can still resolve any DNS query.
However, most lambda users won't ever use their own name daemon. They will simply get the one allocated by DHCP, which is their provider DNS server. It's bandwidth efficient because the ISP DNS server caches requests and can answer rapidly. And it's your ISP server, so you should have a good latency.
Anyway, it happens that your ISP DNS server crashes. At those time, you won't be able to resolve DNS but will still be able to use networked apps since you can still be connected.
Yet we don't disregard the system (and make everyone use a DNS server instead of DNS client with ISP DNS server), first because we can save ton of bandwidth by caching (cache is usually cleaned at restart) but mainly because it's SIMPLER that way. We push the complexity towards the server, and keep simplicity on the client. Thus it's quite easy to implement a DNS client while programming a decent full-featured DNS server is *some work*.
The solution here is to add redundancy. Your ISP has many DNS servers and if one fails, you'll use another.
The same goes with mail servers, your ISP mail server, and MX DNS entries in case of server problem. So having the Jabber network was a way to push the complexity towards the server and make it easy for us Jabber developpers to implement clients, scripts, et al. When you engage a discussion with a Jabber user who's on another Jabber server, if you both are on a frequented server, there's good chance there is *already* a link going between them thus no negociation needed, the message goes fast. It limits the number of concurrent links Jabber servers have because the number of Jabber servers is quite low.
(x) Anonymity is actually quite a cool feature but mainly because it makes Jabber a cool platform. The JID can become "your online self": it adverts of your presence those you allow, and is basically the only thing we know about you at first. The we can enquire your server to know more, but if you told him more. I guess you are waiting for a full IPv6 Internet, given your remark on NAT, and I am on the same side here. However, we are not there yet. And IPs are mostly dynamically affected (talking about end ISP users here of course). The JID is a wrapper of your IP. It makes your address static to the rest of the world. Of course I'm talking about a world using Jabber as a back-end for new yet-to-come services. ie video games using your JID as your identity, thus people you play with can contact you, and given the number of FOSS Jabber libraries out there, gives developpers an easy way to implement a chat in the game. But the *main* point is that you log ON your Jabber server, and your Jabber server TELLS the game server that you are who you pretend to be, and that you can initiate game. Then you can initiate actual "peer to peer" connection with the server. No it's not Passport.NET, but it's a way to identify yourself and advertise of your online presence, and it's distributed. Your Jabber server only knows what you tell him. So here, you're hiding your identity to the game server at first, but then a "true" connection is established. But it's because a game is bandwidth consumming. Some services over Jabber could still use Jabber as a transport when those services should ignore what your IP is.
Well, I honestly don't care much about anonymity either. I have a static IP so I think I am not anonymous anywhere, and Google can pretty much trace me
What I care about is wrapping your identity in the JID. I think it's something great. IP should ide
Ok. Long time IRC user/admin here. And even if I may have agreed with you 5 years earlier, now I absolutely don't :).
:) We need another protocol, because IRC is outdated, but it's stupid to create a brand new protocol when Jabber has everything we need. MUC is the way to go. But it misses the good ol' IRC spirit and population (there are 3 pilgrims on MUC for now). See my message above yours for a good reason. I'm working on eliminating any good reason to remain on IRC.
:)
I have coded bots, hacked IRC daemons many times (Unreal or Bahamut), coded my own IRC services (bots that fake themselves as servers to get the full network image). It sucks. It's only hacks. Bad hacks.
We need a protocol which supports extensibility in the first place. Something like XML. Oh, wait, isn't Jabber XML-based?
You don't "hack" Jabber. Or if you call it hack, it's clever, academic and well-designed hack which won't break anything else. It's easily extensible with JEPs (Jabber Extension Protocols). It rocks.
Now there's still a huge paradigm shift between IM and Traditional Chat à la IRC. But Jabber supports MUCs (Multi User Chats) which are very IRC-like. I hope someday IRC will remain just as an attraction, a museum for your grandkids "Hey grandpa, did you really chat on something THAT badly designed?"
Don't get me wrong: I love IRC, I have spent years on it, and had good laughs. But it was because of the community, of the general IRC spirit. It must not die. But the protocol is crappy, has tons of weirdness and exceptions, really WRONG word-splitting and is FAR TOO MUCH limited.
It may be a little soon to forget IRC. But I'm working on it. I'm working on making all of us forget IRC
Stay tuned
Jabber is the way to go. It's open, scalable, distributed and simple.
The problem are social connections. People are on MSN because their friends are on MSN. Same for Yahoo!
But who from your contact list/roster, in the first place, came on MSN or Yahoo!? Well, users who were advertised by their Yahoo! account or using the MSN client being shipped with Windows. Compare to "Who made you join ICQ, or IRC". No ads, only because it was the way to go, because some computer techies back then told you it was great (well, it WAS indeed).
Slashdot crowd and others, being [...] computer and technologies aware, should be the first link in each of our own socials network to tell others to go Jabber. Non-techie people should trust us on the technical side: Jabber is way better designed than others major IMs services. The Jabber community, for now, is mainly composed of geeks and free software hobbyists. Let's tell our friends to make the switch. It's a little time consumming the first time, but it's free. Tell them to use GTalk (which should be openly federating soon, even with some restrictions to avoid 'spim'..) or any other Jabber server.
There are tons of great clients for Jabber. Under GNU/Linux, you may try Gajim, Tkabber, Gaim or Psi. Under Mac OS X, Gush, Psi or of course iChat. And for those still under Windows, Miranda, Exodus, Gaim or Psi. Google for them.
And they will soon ALL support the feature you want, just give it some time More info
OK I'm a bit late on this story, but maybe some mods will be late too ;)
.ident ) or just on the channel, the PRIVMSG will be sent to every bot. Now 100k bots in a channel is a lot but I have seen 30k already.
;). Who would want to be part of the botnet ? :)
As an IRC admin for few years, I saw many botnet channels. The botnet masters enjoy putting their bots on IRC (on a secret channel) because it's a third party who provides the communication support, IRC is a good message demultiplexer, and they think it's safe since they only log on IRC with a proxy.
They can identify themselves with a given bot by going private (PRIVMSG
The bots had random nicks so we just put a bot of ours with a random nick in the channel, logged everything and then get the login/pass (I guess in this case Dutch police had the login/pass pair from the PCs they seized). Then we looked out for the bot version, looked on the web for commands (usually, the bot masters are script kiddies and just build the bot from an "automatic" builder they download on the web... they wouldn't even build from the sources).
All of the bots I encountered disposed of attacks commands et al, but also a clean removal command. That's what we used.
Now I don't know about the bot in this story, but most likely the botnet masters HAD a mean to contact them all (now is it IRC-like with a big channel, or distributed among the bots à la DNS, I don't know... But even if the removal command isn't here, there's still a way to tell the bot to execute a given binary they download from a given URL).
And I don't think that would really be illegal, remember, the PC owners rarely know they are infected or don't care. They won't know or won't care either if someone removes the bot for them. And if they say something, just sue them since it means they were part of the attack knowingly
Anyway I hope we could shut down more of these networks (and MS should pay for their dismantle since nearly all zombies networks are running Windows).
About your sig, it's not a quote specifically from Jeanne d'Arc. She is said to have told it in her trial, but it is only a widely used french proverb, very often used in songs and poems. It is also found in "Les Fables d'Æsope" (Esope Fables? sp?) which come from ancient Greece (translated to modern french later by Pierre Millot).
To quote Princess Bride, I think it doesn't mean what you think it means.
:).
Emmerder quelqu'un means "bothering someone" in a vulgar way. A literal translation would be "those we throw shit at" (when doing so, French people usually wear gloves)
Profond here is used as an adverb ("beaucoup"), ie "much".
Anyway "ceux qu'on emmerde" is rather soft compared to "those we say fuck to".
What I meant is that MS won't ever give licensing rights to a GPL'd software. If you discriminate someone, you can't be a standard body.
;)). Once they've given control, a free (as in speech, as always :)) implementation can be done but the problem of the patents remain. e.g, they have released the .NET CLR 1 and the C# specs to ECMA and that's what Mono implements. However, nobody's sure of it's perfectly legal on the patents' side and there's no doubt MS will sue them when they think the time is right (just when Mono will go mainstream). They will spread FUD then. So you see, in the FOSS realm everyone rely on the other's good intentions or best interest, and when a company like IBM invests in FOSS for its own selfish needs, we don't reject it 'cause we know they want to hurt MS and make money off FOSS. But in MS's (or SCO's for that matter) case they just want to sink all their competitors, FOSS included.
ISO makes money off standards but everyone can buy them (and the cost is capped afaik). Be sure that MS will never help (and will do everything otherwise in their power) the GPL community (and I mean GPL, because they accept other free licensing terms, they just really *hate* the GPL itself).
As you said, MS doesn't like giving control away, but it has happened a few times, e.g when they wanted to sink Java for C# to take its crown (well if Java ever had a crown, but that's another problem
I say, a standard cannot or shouldn't be a standard if there is any discrimination, and the licensing terms are what MS can't and won't accept, so there is no point tolerating MS formats and protocols. That's why we (must) have an open and better alternative for each of them, with low cost (or none at all) to get the documentation and no cost for implementation (using the trademark, as in Java's case, is yet another matter, but I don't think it's fundamentally wrong).
Finally, I think Java is an open standard as long as Sun documents it and doesn't try to make our task using it or implementing it harder. The Java Community is the standard body and Sun is by design a very influent member of course. We know Sun wants everybody to use, spread and program in Java. MS doesn't want anyone to use their document format, they want everyone to use Word(tm).
Oh yes, I know, that's blasphemy and my karma is now lower than Lucifer's, but if you stop and think for a moment you'll realize that it's the logical and realistic choice.
Then your logic must be flawed. You know MS won't ever release full specs for any of its formats, it could be licensed to big clients (just like their Shared Source program) but NEVER there will be a 100% compliant free implementation. So I fail to see how it could be a standard, the definition you give from the dictionnary is the MAINSTREAM definition and certainly not the one recognized in science or more precisely in the technics (more as in "normalization").
The logical choice is of course OASIS, which has already been recognized as the official document standard in most of European countries, and was compared technically, practically and logically to MS doc by a commission (with people who decided for technical reasons that OASIS was better in most points and rejected MS's bribe yeah).
Still, I don't know how it has evolved, but I remember last february when their was a call for boycott from the FSF against the OASIS Group, regarding their policy towards sw patents. I hope they have/will fix(ed) that but they can't be worse than MS regarding patent abuse or bad patenting policy.
Though I don't find MS fanboys that irritating anymore (it's more that I don't care about MS anymore now that they have a very low impact on my computing life), I don't understand how people can still support them and consider that just because they're the bigger software company they must remain so. And forget excellence.
This thread is old, nobody's gonna read this except maybe you (if you are warned at reply). Anyway...
:P) and I find them amusing, but, damn, you shouldn't be modded insightful. Where is the insight when you just don't know what you're talking about? I don't have anything against you, but more against the stupid moderator who modded you up.
I think we (as in French people) hate MS as much as the next guy may him be American, Polish or Mexican. And no, we haven't anything against Google, we use Google just like everybody else... It's not because some French charged Google (afaik for "legally" good reasons, may I remind you that each country has its own laws?) that French people aren't big fans of Google.
I know Slashdotters like France jokes (haha stop I surrender!! so funny
Oh, and you say "France", I guess you'd find clever if I'd consider "America" as a whole, where everyone is happy about the current administration? Let me tell you : you have ~50% pro Bush ~50% against? Same here with our f*cking Government. You find some court trials to be stupid? So do we, but at least our legal system isn't JUST a weapon to get money and sink competition (at least for now... it's changing unfortunately)
American fantasies about France are ridiculous. Come here for some time and have a look for yourself, but stop giving a whole population ideas because a citizen did something on his own. Hint for you: French companies are just like American companies, they care for themselves before caring for their country. When Louis Vuiton attacked Google for putting ads of counterfeits products in the very result of the search "Louis Vuiton", it is a COMPANY who attacked Google. Not France.
As a matter of fact, we love Google, everybody here knows it, everybody uses it, and we don't have the "it's american so it sux" mentality American people think we have.
I doubt you have any good will if you fail to install Linux on such a widely used configuration.
I have a homebuilt ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe AMD system too with a GeForce 4 and it worked out of the box with Debian Sarge. Been using this desktop for 2 years and a half without a single problem, no hanging, no rebooting, works flawlessly, everything is recognized.
If you install Linux "just to see" without any real intent of using it, that's why you fail. Keep a way to check the web, wipe all your Windows installation and install Debian. You will have no choice but to get things to work properly. Nothing is hard to get working, you just have to change your mindset to get the logic behind everyday Linux use. Hell, I couldn't go back to Windows, I know it sounds a bit of a cliché, but I really find Windows crappy, bloated and barely usable and you would certainly think alike once you find yourself comfy on GNU/Linux. Ideologically, and as a CS student, I would also now be ashamed of using a Microsoft product (ideologically) and Windows, given its fundamental design flaws (Windows has many things wrong in a CS angle).
Oh and btw, X worked out of the box, too. I just tweaked it a little, but that's my own choice. A choice you don't really have on Windows, given the limited settings of the display manager.
So is Linux for everyone? Yes. But it's not to be administered by anyone. My mother couldn't install Windows. She couldn't add a printer under Windows. Now it's been 1 year she's under Debian and she still don't do those things, but what she could do before (Mail, Web, ie the most common uses for private users), she can do now. And I don't have to worry 'bout 0-day exploits and worms. I apt-get regulary and that's fine.
Microsoft tried to demonstrate that everyone can be his own PC admin. On the contrary, they gave us a proof by contradiction. Look at worms, botnet, spam. Microsoft can be held responsible for much of these. Most people don't care, that's fine. But I do, so at least in my entourage, we are Microsoft-free.
PS: we can't say everything in one message, nothing is perfect, and Linux isn't. Windows may not that bad for some uses either.