Most clueful Government contractors do not work this way. From reading the site I'm sure Secure Computing does not have this arangement. Whats more likely is that they charge the NSA to develop software, but when the deal is done, both Secure Computing and the NSA will have rights to the source code. Under normal government contracting the NSA could then take that code to another contractor or fork it themselves. This only happens when the customer gets really, really, pissed at you but needs the software. As Secure Computing develops future versions of this linux, the NSA will probably have to pay again for support and updates. Overall this works well with the GPL. The only thing the GPL does in this case is reinforce the NSA's ability to fork or hire someone else to do the job. Neither of which are likely. It does not force source code release to the public, it only gives more rights to people who paid for programs.
This post had me cracking up. Moderators mark it up some more!
I especially love the part about:
So when a thug like Caldera takes advantage of our obviously compromised legal situation to levy this blackmail on us, it makes me livid.
Anyway, don't get too angry about this. Remember that for your company $150 million probably isn't even significant digits. I mean it wouldn't be noticed after round off error.
I'm boycotting them as well. I'm trying to find some out of print books and even though I know amazon has the capability to find them I refuse to use that service.
So can anyone suggest a good link for used book searches?
This is an "Ask Slashdot" feature. It was not posted as an article, but a request for discussion. Yes this post is a troll, but as an "Ask Slashdot" feature, it was never claimed to be anything other than that.
Umm, I do not think this is really Scott McNealy. What gave it away? The typos. Certainly he would have had a secretary proofread the letter before posting it.
Hi, My Nale is Scott Mc Nealy. You've probably seen me before in such films as "The Backbone of The Internet", "A Rainy Day In WA", or "Everybody Says I Love You Bill".
My PR dept. here at Sun kept telling me about this great website, Splashpot.
So I am going to tell you about those allegations of us ripping off Blackgowns. Lemme tell you one thing. It cost us millions $$$ to come up with that cute steaming logo. Our lawyers keep crying "hungry" in our ongoing lawsuits. Our marketing dept. is glutonning millions still to hide the fact that we can't produce a stable VM. But let me tell you something -- we had to take that money from somewhere. Clearly, engineers are way overpaid.
Foley VanDamn is THE textbook for most graphics things you might have to do. On the negative side it is almost impossible to read:(
Although it contains almost everything you need to know I don't recommend it unless you the kind of person who can read computer textbooks.
A must have book to get you started in the OpenGL Red book. The actual name is the "OpenGL Programming Guide : The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 1.2, Third Edition" by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. This covers all of the computer graphics basics and how to do them in OpenGL
For a beginner I recommend "3D Computer Graphics, Third Edition" by Alan Watt
A much more advanced text which covers more recent tech is "Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, Theory and Practice" by Alan and Mark Watt
There are many, many more good books, but these should get you quite far.
Ram density & clock speeds are only indirectly linked to Moore's law. There's also some indication that cpu power is growing faster than Moore's law currently.
It's time for us to act. We can protect ourselves against these kinds of overzealous corporations by starting our own Slashdot Blackhole List.
This would be a collective list of lowlife companies that all honest geeks should boycott. The only way to make these companies change their is to impact their bottom line.
If we do it well, we could educate the public as to why they should boycott certain companies. If a list like this actually went into use, companies on that list would see impact from the following places: 1) Harder to hire geeks. do you really want to work for a company on the blackhole list? 2) Harder to purchase advetising. 3) Stock by spreading word of mouth that a company has been blackholed we could truely hurt these penny counters where it hurts.
The list might look something like this:
1) Amazon -> for patenting the obvious "1 click" shopping system.
I have a friend who worked for a company doing reverse engineering at some point. My recollection is that it was legal under certain strict circumstances
The problem here is the confusion between copyright law and patent law. The are two completely different things.
Reverse Engineering is usually done because you can't copy something outright. Either you don't have access to the source, or even if you did copyright law would prevent you from using it in your app.
Where copyright law will only protect the actual code, patent law protects the entire method. Think of it this way. The telephone and light bulb have already been invented and covered with patents (ok vey old patents). Even if you created them completely from scratch they would still be covered by patents. The only way get around a patent it to not do what the patent describes.
In comparision a book like Stroustrup's "The C++ programming language" is covered by copyright. You could provide the exact same information as he did in a new book. As long as you didn't copy word for word it would be alright.
BTW, if you violate a patent it is possible to be held libel for triple damages.
Reminds me of a story by Phillip Dick called the Minority Report. It's in production for a movie now. Tom Cruise plays a guy who is arrested because the authorities calculate that he will commit murder soon.
Actually this info is very valuable. Companies pay research firms to get info like this. Not only do they have a snapshot of the current situation, but also a day-to day historical record. They know not only how fast cards are selling into the market place, but also which ones are disapearing.
Let's say I want to release a new card. It is very important for me to know what is selling, getting replaced and whats sitting out there now. Or if I want partner with some 3d card company how do I pick the best partner. This info would help me make decisions like that.
I would love to know the demographics that Id has gotten.
This technology has been around for quite a while. Lockheed Martin has a passive detection system which isn't even completely classified anymore. One of the great things about this tech is that it can do much more than detect anti-stealth aircraft. It can also detect thing flying at very low altitude, which would normally be below radar. Imagine how much low altidute drug traffic can be stopped with a network of silent sentry sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many other countries are rumored to have this technology including the Czech Republic and Turkey. When you consider that these places are not the most tech advanced places in the world, it should come as no surpise that we decided to take out all broadcasting capability in Yugoslavia. I'm sure that China having this ability is no shock to the people running the show. What they probably worry about on a daily basis however is when will Iraqi get it. Sooner or later someone will sell it to them and it will get much tougher to bomb them as we are now.
I know that something fishy is going on from personal expierence. I had some computer equipment shipped and insured by UPS. It was damaged when I recieved it. In July I asked to collect on the insurance. They got back to me in September, inspected the equipment and said they would refund me. Well, I'm still waiting for the money. These guys have pissed me off. Do not use UPS to ship anything worth over $100!!!
"Realism" comes from a whole lot of different factors. Frame Rate is one of those factors. In order to get the best frame rate X needs to know the internal details of the 3d card. Open sourcing the drivers makes this possible for for free versions of X. The end result is that we should see faster frame rates using free versions of X but only for 3dfx cards.
Realism can also come from using advanced features on the card which let gl programs do more work for little cost in frame rate. Open sourcing the drivers also makes this possible, but getting the best performance requires programmers to know which trade offs to make on which card. Although this is possible don't expect it too soon.
This is news because a lot of people have these cards and it pressures other 3d card makers to follow.
First they announce Linux as the official OS for china, then they lay out war plans for attacking the US. If the use of Microsoft products continues as is we could be in real trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Most clueful Government contractors do not work this way. From reading the site I'm sure Secure Computing does not have this arangement. Whats more likely is that they charge the NSA to develop software, but when the deal is done, both Secure Computing and the NSA will have rights to the source code. Under normal government contracting the NSA could then take that code to another contractor or fork it themselves. This only happens when the customer gets really, really, pissed at you but needs the software. As Secure Computing develops future versions of this linux, the NSA will probably have to pay again for support and updates. Overall this works well with the GPL. The only thing the GPL does in this case is reinforce the NSA's ability to fork or hire someone else to do the job. Neither of which are likely. It does not force source code release to the public, it only gives more rights to people who paid for programs.
I especially love the part about:
Anyway, don't get too angry about this. Remember that for your company $150 million probably isn't even significant digits. I mean it wouldn't be noticed after round off error.
You can not moderate an article you posted to. You will just waste your moderation pts.
I'm boycotting them as well. I'm trying to find some out of print books and even though I know amazon has the capability to find them I refuse to use that service.
So can anyone suggest a good link for used book searches?
This is an "Ask Slashdot" feature. It was not posted as an article, but a request for discussion. Yes this post is a troll, but as an "Ask Slashdot" feature, it was never claimed to be anything other than that.
--
Artie FM
Say my name outloud 3 times real fast
Foley VanDamn is THE textbook for most graphics things you might have to do. On the negative side it is almost impossible to read :(
Although it contains almost everything you need to know I don't recommend it unless you the kind of person who can read computer textbooks.
A must have book to get you started in the OpenGL Red book. The actual name is the "OpenGL Programming Guide : The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 1.2, Third Edition" by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. This covers all of the computer graphics basics and how to do them in OpenGL
For a beginner I recommend "3D Computer Graphics, Third Edition" by Alan Watt
A much more advanced text which covers more recent tech is "Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, Theory and Practice" by Alan and Mark Watt
There are many, many more good books, but these should get you quite far.
Please create a new topic: obituaries, so that we can filter out these posts.
What software are you using?
Ram density & clock speeds are only indirectly linked to Moore's law. There's also some indication that cpu power is growing faster than Moore's law currently.
It's time for us to act. We can protect ourselves against these kinds of overzealous corporations by starting our own Slashdot Blackhole List.
This would be a collective list of lowlife companies that all honest geeks should boycott. The only way to make these companies change their is to impact their bottom line.
If we do it well, we could educate the public as to why they should boycott certain companies. If a list like this actually went into use, companies on that list would see impact from the following places:
1) Harder to hire geeks. do you really want to work for a company on the blackhole list?
2) Harder to purchase advetising.
3) Stock by spreading word of mouth that a company has been blackholed we could truely hurt these penny counters where it hurts.
The list might look something like this:
1) Amazon -> for patenting the obvious "1 click" shopping system.
Who else belongs on it?
The problem here is the confusion between copyright law and patent law. The are two completely different things.
Reverse Engineering is usually done because you can't copy something outright. Either you don't have access to the source, or even if you did copyright law would prevent you from using it in your app.
Where copyright law will only protect the actual code, patent law protects the entire method. Think of it this way. The telephone and light bulb have already been invented and covered with patents (ok vey old patents). Even if you created them completely from scratch they would still be covered by patents. The only way get around a patent it to not do what the patent describes.
In comparision a book like Stroustrup's "The C++ programming language" is covered by copyright. You could provide the exact same information as he did in a new book. As long as you didn't copy word for word it would be alright.
BTW, if you violate a patent it is possible to be held libel for triple damages.
Reminds me of a story by Phillip Dick called the Minority Report. It's in production for a movie now. Tom Cruise plays a guy who is arrested because the authorities calculate that he will commit murder soon.
Actually this info is very valuable. Companies pay research firms to get info like this. Not only do they have a snapshot of the current situation, but also a day-to day historical record. They know not only how fast cards are selling into the market place, but also which ones are disapearing.
Let's say I want to release a new card. It is very important for me to know what is selling, getting replaced and whats sitting out there now. Or if I want partner with some 3d card company how do I pick the best partner. This info would help me make decisions like that.
I would love to know the demographics that Id has gotten.
This technology has been around for quite a while. Lockheed Martin has a passive detection system which isn't even completely classified anymore. One of the great things about this tech is that it can do much more than detect anti-stealth aircraft. It can also detect thing flying at very low altitude, which would normally be below radar. Imagine how much low altidute drug traffic can be stopped with a network of silent sentry sites in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many other countries are rumored to have this technology including the Czech Republic and Turkey. When you consider that these places are not the most tech advanced places in the world, it should come as no surpise that we decided to take out all broadcasting capability in Yugoslavia. I'm sure that China having this ability is no shock to the people running the show. What they probably worry about on a daily basis however is when will Iraqi get it. Sooner or later someone will sell it to them and it will get much tougher to bomb them as we are now.
Gee, I've always thought Phillip Dick was the greatest hack of all time.
And when talking of hacks, who could forget
Piers Anthony, the hack that keeps hacking.
I know that something fishy is going on from personal expierence.
I had some computer equipment shipped and insured by UPS. It was damaged when I recieved it. In July I asked to collect on the insurance. They got back to me in September, inspected the equipment and said they would refund me. Well, I'm still waiting for the money. These guys have pissed me off.
Do not use UPS to ship anything worth over $100!!!
why don't you worry about your kitten kaboodle's and I'll take care of mine!
Realism can also come from using advanced features on the card which let gl programs do more work for little cost in frame rate. Open sourcing the drivers also makes this possible, but getting the best performance requires programmers to know which trade offs to make on which card. Although this is possible don't expect it too soon.
This is news because a lot of people have these cards and it pressures other 3d card makers to follow.
First they announce Linux as the official OS for china, then they lay out war plans for attacking the US. If the use of Microsoft products continues as is we could be in real trouble.
If outcome from this case is Microsoft losing and the DOJ attempting to break the company up, what would be the earliest we could see some results.
Thanks for this link. It seems like a cool site.
You have to be impressed with a guy that gets a /. article written about him.
That almost made me bust my gut!!!
Woops the time on that post is wrong.