Just to clarify, I presume the poster meant that the JFK assasination was instigated by one mad US citizen, not
that JFK was himself that citizen.
His point was that many US disasters have initially been blamed on foreign powers (e.g: Cuba), but in the light of reason have been shown to be the work of our own citizenry.
As a part of the price for a free and open society, I don't object to the fact that US citizens can commit heinous crimes, but I withhold judgement about what happened in this particular
case.
Sky marshals already fly on random flights. I can't see why security guards can't be flown on every
flight larger than a 727.
Also flight attendants probably are aware of a
hijacking well before the pilot is. Pilot cabin
doors should be locked by default, and attendants
should probably be able to signal the pilot that a
hijacking is underway. Then a simple policy
response would probably be sufficient to guarantee
that a hijacking takeover attempt would fail.
In person I can easily see how a terrorist
could use a bomb threat or helpless hostage to
persuade a pilot to leave the flight controls,
but through a policy response that effort would
(nearly) always fail making it useless to try.
Whenever someone says that I think that they
are talking about Debian. Of course Debian is
the GNU/Linux project. The other projects are
all named something else (Redhat Linux for example.) But when I'm talking about Linux based distributions, I just write Linux. If I want to
talk about a specific distribution I usually use
the first name, e.g: Redhat or Debian.
Re:IBM's Strange Affair With Linux
on
IBM Wants Linux
·
· Score: 2
By the time we actually get around to solidifying whats important (ie. a standardized GUI we can all use instead of two sibling projects who don't want to play in the same sandbox) and hammering out the better known weaknesses in Linux (The handling of SCSI devices, in particular) it may already be too late, unfortunately.
As someone who uses Linux with SCSI every day,
I can confirm that Linux is much less stable with
SCSI devices. Typically an error on the SCSI bus will start an unending sequence of bus resets. Buffer allocation leaks in the st driver error out after a couple of opens (if you are using st, you
basically have to allocate buffers at boot or mod load time; otherwise the buffer issue will kill the device quickly); also the st performance is
awful when configured for reliable writing (unbuffered, synchronous) and the st devices defaults to a useless configuration with a bizarre
mechanism for getting a useful device that means you will never know from one machine to the next if your code will work. SCSI DVD-RAM is recognized but completely unsupported and the sr
maintainer appears to think that DVD-RAM is
similar to CD-RW (not true; CD-RW only does packet
writes, while DVD-RAM can be treated like a hard-drive. It should just be added to the sd
driver.) The sd driver has its own problems,
basically ignoring the drive 10byte command request and using 6byte commands anyway unless
the sector being written is out of the 6-byte command range (6-byte commands don't work at all
with some of the newer SCSI devices). Device ordering is messed up, the OS doesn't correctly
recognize the BIOS settings for SCSI before IDE
so booting such a system adds the chore of manually maintaining BIOS drive numbers. SCSI busses are recognized in a predetermined order defined by their scan names instead of their order
on the PCI bus. As a result Linux often gets the
order incorrect half of the time if two different SCSI controllers are installed (patch the scan order and rebuild the kernel to get past this
problem.) And there are some filesystem partition size limits around 32G and 8G that require patches to get around.
And those are just the problems that I've personally encountered in the last two years
off the top of my head.
If you are doing custom device drivers then
AIX is a very nice operating system to develop
for. As a micro kernel your drivers are running
in ring 1 so it is difficult to kill ring 0.
Even with modules it is much easier for device drivers in Linux to panic the kernel, and in Linux you don't get a core dump of the panic'd kernel to debug.
Also for those who aren't familiar with AIX, 'smit' is the system administration tool developed for AIX by IBM. There are about a thousand little commands to modify individual configuration files in AIX, that are nearly impossible to remember. Personally I prefer 'vi' and text based configuration. On the other hand AIX commands are scriptable (I suppose text files can be as well
with a bit of Perl, but text is easier to get
AFU'd), and smit provides a nice GUI interface for checking parameter completeness.
Slashdot is different because it is both user moderated, and it is possible to go back and see
the moderated posts.
IMO the only places where Slashdot has real
problems are where the user moderation isn't implemented. In the posting of articles for instance, or in the relatively rare cases where
the slash authors get involved in moderating posts
themselves.
Anyway, I've hardly ever read the talkbacks
on LinuxToday articles. Whenever I submitted a
correction to some difference of opinion with an
editorial, my submission was never posted. When
I agreed it was. I figured out pretty quickly
that the dice were loaded at LinuxToday, although
they are still an excellent source of news headlines.
I don't know about Cisco's work in particular, but
the general trend is toward micro billing for
quality of service flags. Mark your IP packet as
time critical, get billed for time critical data
(and the data gets shipped out first along the next
hop). There has also been some suggestion of diverting unenhanced data to slower data links (unpaid packets might be routed over satellite
infrastructure inserting 150ms delays in the
internet backbone) for that non-critical data while
time critical information might be bounced along
terrestrial lines instead.
Really though, these ideas aren't as new as
some Journalists would have you believe. ATM
was designed for this kind of priority based
routing and its most successful application
thus far is routing IP data for DSL customers.
The other strategic direction for a company
to take is that effectively unlimited bandwidth will soon be all but
free for the use of anyone who needs it. Indeed the fiber optic work of the last several years does imply that the cost of bandwidth will be
primarily in the last mile, not in the network infrastructure. Still there are companies that
make both bets.
If we want to find the BIO terrorists, we
really only have to look in the mirror. BiotechCentury.org, is one example, but there are thousands of sites
on this subject. Just do a google search on Monsanto to see the innumerable ways that they have
screwed little farmers (who didn't even want their product, but were charged anyway when pollen from other fields spread to their lang.)
If you are a US citizen then you already live in the ultimate BIO terrorist state baby.
Everyone sees things through their own filters I guess. I didn't think the James Dean stuff was all that interesting either.
I do still use my Rebel Netwinder though:
It only draws something like 30W of wall current, so I don't mind leaving it on all the time, even at Californian energy prices.
It used to be under a thousand bucks (barely), which was reasonable for a special purpose server.
It has been pretty reliable (most of my reboots have come from accidentally pulling the power out or similar.)
The device is incredibly obscure. Even though I often don't get around to installing security updates for a month or more after they've been announced, very few people have an interest in hand coding StrongArm machine code for the stack overflow bugs.
Netwinder.org is a great resource.
On the other hand there were several annoying aspects to the Rebel servers:
IT is often a bitch to get things to compile on it. This is mostly the fault of the braindead decision of ARM computer makers to set a standard for C-struct padding that doesn't match standard UNIX.
I would really rather be using a 3.5" drive. Much less expensive, and easier to upgrade. Also considerably faster throughput.
The web-based server management software distributed on the machine is pretty useless.
Getting the beast back for defect fixes was a
royal pain. Triplicate customs forms, outrageous
shipping charges,...the machines probably should have been burned in with a complete function test at the factory before shipping to the US.
They inexplicably started raising the prices on machines already released, without any significant improvements as far as I could tell. That is the wrong way to go guys!
Re:Microsoft is just trying to minimize the damage
on
Microsoft and the GPL
·
· Score: 2
Linux just happened to be the first project that got completed. NSA has been playing with different ideas for secure systems on several
different OS's.
This still doesn't explain what Rob meant about "she wasn't actuually as qualified as we had hoped." But then, I kind of suspect I don't really want to know either.
The natural english interpretation of a layman would be that she didn't fix the problem. In other words, it is probably a slightly hyperbolic reference to the fact that the problem continued to persist even after the network tech had arrived. I wouldn't read into that that Rob was disparaging the actual technical skills of the person in question, (unless he has those skills himself he'd hardly be in a position to judge) but as a simple tongue in cheek reference to the distance between skill and expectation (ie: as we had hoped..)
It is easy to hope that your techs can walk on water. It is slightly less common to find people who take a shortcut across the duck pond on the way to work.
DEC was renowned for nothing so much as their inability to market good products. Dunno about Compaq, but without an NT for it I can't imagine that they would know what to do with it (which probably explains this article).
Um... NT does run on Alpha in 32 bit mode. Not that it helps much since practically nothing else besides the OS runs on Alpha. Even Microsoft didn't bother to port their own apps to Alpha.
My favorite use for Cyc (from the FAQ) is as a mail filter.
Rule 1: If if is FREE it probably isn't interesting.
Rule 2: Free software and FreeBSD are interesting.
Rule 3: Free reports about free software and FreeBSD are not interesting.
Rule 4: If it is about SEX or...
I'm looking forward to my new mail filter. I might even upgrade it to filter web search results.
No, just a way to keep my sanity. Otherwise it is like someone with perfect pitch trying to listen to a chorus singing half a note flat.
My informal survey produced 600k hits for web pages featuring the word 'loser' and another 110k hits for 'looser'. Looking past the tortuous misspellings the the second category about a third are written by non-native english speakers, a third by people correctly using 'looser' in the sense of 'loose', and about a third (seemingly) belong to the prepubescent FPS player category.
Interesting etymological question there. Is 'looser' (as used on Slashdot) actually the same word as 'loser'? I think one could argue that although they share a common ancestor, that the
meaning has changed.
'Looser' brings to my mind someone who is
unworthy of any deference. A 'loser' by contrast is someone who though possibly a worthy competitor, fails to 'win'. While 'loser' can be used in a more derogatory way (you loser), I think that usage has moved primarily to the new spelling. (And yes, I know that 'looser' already had a perfectly valid meaning; now it has two.)
Yeah, off topic. I know. That is why I subtracted my +1 bonus.
Frankly, show me one usefull feature on RH distribution that hasn't been done before ?
Well, if you read the report, you'll realize that it isn't about Redhat. It is about Linux,
with Redhat standing in as a representative distribution.
As for what useful features have been invented by the open source community:
IP Masquerading/Dnet/term
e-Mail delivery and filtering
USENet
CGI Languages: Perl, Python,...
Community Portals: CPAN, Slash (even Yahoo originally.)
Chat and conferencing: MUDs, IRC, talk
Numerous specialized inventions in areas like compiler/parser optimization, programming language extensions, caching, sparse arrays, dynamic loading, data compression, etc.
UI skinning
Graphical shells: wish, pygtk, etc.
Mirroring and indexing tools: archie, rsync
Web enabled development tools like webcvs, Bugzilla, etc.
XML & XML development tools, docbook,...
Stroke shaped fonts and document layout: TeX & metafont
Visual text editing
And I think I'm only scratching the surface. The open source community is very diverse, including both individuals working for the sheer joy of programming and companies who have developed code for specific internal IT projects and have given out the source in a way that it is sharable (socks for example).
I would guess that on average OS does less reinventing of problems that have already been solved and more original work than any company could do. Even GTK which is arguably a distorted
clone of Motif has some very interesting and unique inventions that are very useful for porting graphical toolkits to different language bindings.
But while it doesn't deny anyone the ability to profit from their labor, it also doesn't provide a mechanism for them to profit.
The GPL is essentially silent on how you exchange code for money, and I think it is
right to be skeptical of that missing element, since without it there isn't a source of money to invest in the next generation of the system.
Of course there are lots of possibilities... Eric Raymond has spent several years looking at the various possibilities. I find myself unconvinced of their effectiveness however.
Redhat for example is really supported in a
way that is more similar to NPR than it is to
Eric's idea of loss-leader plus support. VA on
the other hand doesn't seem very effective at earning money at all. And neither of these
companies is able to collect enough income to
really support the development that is going in
to their products.
Repayment in kind (as the original article
suggests) by keeping the software free certainly
attracts a few people, but by its nature these
people must be supported somehow.
I think the GPL would benefit from some sort of
a right of taxation. Either as a duty to a non-profit which then redistributes the income to various developers, or as voluntary payment. But without some evidence that the development can continue to grow in the long term, skeptics who are not able or willing to maintain their own software will seek out an alternative social system that has a future that they can count on.
You should be able to fix that from the helper application preferences. Just select the check mark for that file type that says: 'Display internally in Mozilla'
While I voted for Nader in the last election, it seems he didn't consider his showing significant enough to really leverage his political points. Which is too bad really since he could have made a strong case that he did lose the election for Al Gore and that the democratic party should listen to him or continue losing elections to disenfranchised voters turning third party.
If Nader had followed through I'd have been quite happy with that vote, but right now I think it was just a waste. So, in essence I'm not too worried about how smart Jon is (he isn't going to become president anyway), rather in how well he can connect with people and with the problem.
Round 4: Hardware Compatibility:
Good, but could be better. Win2k is the winner once again with support for practically everything.
Not to be snide, but practically everything in your lexicon must mean the hardware I want it to work on. Win2k doesn't run on anything besides Intel x86 derived chips in approximately
desktop configurations. Headless Win2k is a PITA. Scalability is non-existent on the low end (Win2k in a TiVo?), and crippled on the high end
by lack of hardware support.
But for an office server, sure, it supports the full range of consumer desktop computing hardware pretty well. Big deal.
I think that all of you are missing the point. Katz isn't dissing Microsoft just because they make a good punching bag. He is making a political point about the power structure of America, and how corporations as exemplified by Microsoft can generate almost instant control over their own futures despite governmental balances meant to keep corporate power in check.
So all I wonder is "Where is your 2004 campaign site, Jon?" I'm half way serious in this... if you are willing to make yourself a political demagogue for this cause, I'm willing to make a cash contribution, and probably even a vote. Power to the people, god damnit!
For a long time now we have all argued that Marx was mistaken; that even if an eventual surplus of wealth would eventually cause a transition to more socialist ideals, it wouldn't require bloody revolution to effect that change. Marx, we keep telling ourselves, was simply a product of his times.
But with people in a previous thread seriously arguing that corporations should "have no moral
obligations" something is seriously out of whack, and I'd be highly surprised if this imbalance between the rights and duties of individuals and corporations doesn't come to a head. And soon too, if the pendulum doesn't start swinging back pretty quickly.
I suppose you could purposely go out to thieve some GPL'd source code, and wait for someone to sue you (the FSF is pretty good about protecting its rights for example) and let the blocks fall where they may. It could be an expensive hobby though (intentionally infringing on registered original works can bring IIRC treble
damages plus all attorneys fees.)
Really though you don't need to martyr yourself or your company in this way. While it is true that GPL hasn't been tested in court, it does have quite a bit of established precedent. Many companies have been in violation of various aspects of the GPL at some point, and have voluntarily come back in compliance when the problem was pointed out to them, and that precedent helps other violators understand the potential risk in violating the license.
Also, if I understand it correctly, you can really only send an encrypted message to one person at a time,
because you're encrypting it with their public key (so that their private key decrypts it). So PGP is not
really a solution for, say, mailing lists.
No, S/MIME and PGP both support addressing to multiple parties. You don't actually encrypt the whole message with the recipients public key (that would take forever to calculate anyway.) Instead PGP uses a symmetric key for encrypting the main message, and then encrypts that key with the assymetric algorithm, once for each recipient.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to clarify, I presume the poster meant that the JFK assasination was instigated by one mad US citizen, not that JFK was himself that citizen.
His point was that many US disasters have initially been blamed on foreign powers (e.g: Cuba), but in the light of reason have been shown to be the work of our own citizenry.
As a part of the price for a free and open society, I don't object to the fact that US citizens can commit heinous crimes, but I withhold judgement about what happened in this particular case.
flight larger than a 727.
Also flight attendants probably are aware of a
hijacking well before the pilot is. Pilot cabin
doors should be locked by default, and attendants
should probably be able to signal the pilot that a
hijacking is underway. Then a simple policy
response would probably be sufficient to guarantee
that a hijacking takeover attempt would fail.
In person I can easily see how a terrorist
could use a bomb threat or helpless hostage to
persuade a pilot to leave the flight controls,
but through a policy response that effort would
(nearly) always fail making it useless to try.
Whenever someone says that I think that they are talking about Debian. Of course Debian is the GNU/Linux project. The other projects are all named something else (Redhat Linux for example.) But when I'm talking about Linux based distributions, I just write Linux. If I want to talk about a specific distribution I usually use the first name, e.g: Redhat or Debian.
As someone who uses Linux with SCSI every day,
I can confirm that Linux is much less stable with
SCSI devices. Typically an error on the SCSI bus will start an unending sequence of bus resets. Buffer allocation leaks in the st driver error out after a couple of opens (if you are using st, you
basically have to allocate buffers at boot or mod load time; otherwise the buffer issue will kill the device quickly); also the st performance is
awful when configured for reliable writing (unbuffered, synchronous) and the st devices defaults to a useless configuration with a bizarre
mechanism for getting a useful device that means you will never know from one machine to the next if your code will work. SCSI DVD-RAM is recognized but completely unsupported and the sr
maintainer appears to think that DVD-RAM is
similar to CD-RW (not true; CD-RW only does packet
writes, while DVD-RAM can be treated like a hard-drive. It should just be added to the sd
driver.) The sd driver has its own problems,
basically ignoring the drive 10byte command request and using 6byte commands anyway unless
the sector being written is out of the 6-byte command range (6-byte commands don't work at all
with some of the newer SCSI devices). Device ordering is messed up, the OS doesn't correctly
recognize the BIOS settings for SCSI before IDE
so booting such a system adds the chore of manually maintaining BIOS drive numbers. SCSI busses are recognized in a predetermined order defined by their scan names instead of their order
on the PCI bus. As a result Linux often gets the
order incorrect half of the time if two different SCSI controllers are installed (patch the scan order and rebuild the kernel to get past this
problem.) And there are some filesystem partition size limits around 32G and 8G that require patches to get around.
And those are just the problems that I've personally encountered in the last two years
off the top of my head.
If you are doing custom device drivers then
AIX is a very nice operating system to develop
for. As a micro kernel your drivers are running
in ring 1 so it is difficult to kill ring 0.
Even with modules it is much easier for device drivers in Linux to panic the kernel, and in Linux you don't get a core dump of the panic'd kernel to debug.
Also for those who aren't familiar with AIX, 'smit' is the system administration tool developed for AIX by IBM. There are about a thousand little commands to modify individual configuration files in AIX, that are nearly impossible to remember. Personally I prefer 'vi' and text based configuration. On the other hand AIX commands are scriptable (I suppose text files can be as well
with a bit of Perl, but text is easier to get
AFU'd), and smit provides a nice GUI interface for checking parameter completeness.
Slashdot is different because it is both user moderated, and it is possible to go back and see the moderated posts.
IMO the only places where Slashdot has real problems are where the user moderation isn't implemented. In the posting of articles for instance, or in the relatively rare cases where the slash authors get involved in moderating posts themselves.
Anyway, I've hardly ever read the talkbacks on LinuxToday articles. Whenever I submitted a correction to some difference of opinion with an editorial, my submission was never posted. When I agreed it was. I figured out pretty quickly that the dice were loaded at LinuxToday, although they are still an excellent source of news headlines.
I don't know about Cisco's work in particular, but the general trend is toward micro billing for quality of service flags. Mark your IP packet as time critical, get billed for time critical data (and the data gets shipped out first along the next hop). There has also been some suggestion of diverting unenhanced data to slower data links (unpaid packets might be routed over satellite infrastructure inserting 150ms delays in the internet backbone) for that non-critical data while time critical information might be bounced along terrestrial lines instead.
Really though, these ideas aren't as new as some Journalists would have you believe. ATM was designed for this kind of priority based routing and its most successful application thus far is routing IP data for DSL customers.
The other strategic direction for a company to take is that effectively unlimited bandwidth will soon be all but free for the use of anyone who needs it. Indeed the fiber optic work of the last several years does imply that the cost of bandwidth will be primarily in the last mile, not in the network infrastructure. Still there are companies that make both bets.
If we want to find the BIO terrorists, we really only have to look in the mirror. BiotechCentury.org, is one example, but there are thousands of sites on this subject. Just do a google search on Monsanto to see the innumerable ways that they have screwed little farmers (who didn't even want their product, but were charged anyway when pollen from other fields spread to their lang.)
If you are a US citizen then you already live in the ultimate BIO terrorist state baby.
Everyone sees things through their own filters I guess. I didn't think the James Dean stuff was all that interesting either.
I do still use my Rebel Netwinder though:
On the other hand there were several annoying aspects to the Rebel servers:
Linux just happened to be the first project that got completed. NSA has been playing with different ideas for secure systems on several different OS's.
The natural english interpretation of a layman would be that she didn't fix the problem. In other words, it is probably a slightly hyperbolic reference to the fact that the problem continued to persist even after the network tech had arrived. I wouldn't read into that that Rob was disparaging the actual technical skills of the person in question, (unless he has those skills himself he'd hardly be in a position to judge) but as a simple tongue in cheek reference to the distance between skill and expectation (ie: as we had hoped..)
It is easy to hope that your techs can walk on water. It is slightly less common to find people who take a shortcut across the duck pond on the way to work.
Um... NT does run on Alpha in 32 bit mode. Not that it helps much since practically nothing else besides the OS runs on Alpha. Even Microsoft didn't bother to port their own apps to Alpha.
My favorite use for Cyc (from the FAQ) is as a mail filter.
Rule 2: Free software and FreeBSD are interesting.
Rule 3: Free reports about free software and FreeBSD are not interesting.
Rule 4: If it is about SEX or
I'm looking forward to my new mail filter. I might even upgrade it to filter web search results.
No, just a way to keep my sanity. Otherwise it is like someone with perfect pitch trying to listen to a chorus singing half a note flat.
My informal survey produced 600k hits for web pages featuring the word 'loser' and another 110k hits for 'looser'. Looking past the tortuous misspellings the the second category about a third are written by non-native english speakers, a third by people correctly using 'looser' in the sense of 'loose', and about a third (seemingly) belong to the prepubescent FPS player category.
'Looser' brings to my mind someone who is unworthy of any deference. A 'loser' by contrast is someone who though possibly a worthy competitor, fails to 'win'. While 'loser' can be used in a more derogatory way (you loser), I think that usage has moved primarily to the new spelling. (And yes, I know that 'looser' already had a perfectly valid meaning; now it has two.)
Yeah, off topic. I know. That is why I subtracted my +1 bonus.
Absolutely not! I insist on using the vaguely penguin shaped glyph for Linux. :)
Well, if you read the report, you'll realize that it isn't about Redhat. It is about Linux, with Redhat standing in as a representative distribution.
As for what useful features have been invented by the open source community:
And I think I'm only scratching the surface. The open source community is very diverse, including both individuals working for the sheer joy of programming and companies who have developed code for specific internal IT projects and have given out the source in a way that it is sharable (socks for example).
I would guess that on average OS does less reinventing of problems that have already been solved and more original work than any company could do. Even GTK which is arguably a distorted clone of Motif has some very interesting and unique inventions that are very useful for porting graphical toolkits to different language bindings.
Interesting point.
But while it doesn't deny anyone the ability to profit from their labor, it also doesn't provide a mechanism for them to profit.
The GPL is essentially silent on how you exchange code for money, and I think it is right to be skeptical of that missing element, since without it there isn't a source of money to invest in the next generation of the system.
Of course there are lots of possibilities... Eric Raymond has spent several years looking at the various possibilities. I find myself unconvinced of their effectiveness however.
Redhat for example is really supported in a way that is more similar to NPR than it is to Eric's idea of loss-leader plus support. VA on the other hand doesn't seem very effective at earning money at all. And neither of these companies is able to collect enough income to really support the development that is going in to their products.
Repayment in kind (as the original article suggests) by keeping the software free certainly attracts a few people, but by its nature these people must be supported somehow.
I think the GPL would benefit from some sort of a right of taxation. Either as a duty to a non-profit which then redistributes the income to various developers, or as voluntary payment. But without some evidence that the development can continue to grow in the long term, skeptics who are not able or willing to maintain their own software will seek out an alternative social system that has a future that they can count on.
Not radioactive, just radioemissive.
You should be able to fix that from the helper application preferences. Just select the check mark for that file type that says: 'Display internally in Mozilla'
While I voted for Nader in the last election, it seems he didn't consider his showing significant enough to really leverage his political points. Which is too bad really since he could have made a strong case that he did lose the election for Al Gore and that the democratic party should listen to him or continue losing elections to disenfranchised voters turning third party.
If Nader had followed through I'd have been quite happy with that vote, but right now I think it was just a waste. So, in essence I'm not too worried about how smart Jon is (he isn't going to become president anyway), rather in how well he can connect with people and with the problem.
Good, but could be better. Win2k is the winner once again with support for practically everything.
Not to be snide, but practically everything in your lexicon must mean the hardware I want it to work on. Win2k doesn't run on anything besides Intel x86 derived chips in approximately desktop configurations. Headless Win2k is a PITA. Scalability is non-existent on the low end (Win2k in a TiVo?), and crippled on the high end by lack of hardware support.
But for an office server, sure, it supports the full range of consumer desktop computing hardware pretty well. Big deal.
I think that all of you are missing the point. Katz isn't dissing Microsoft just because they make a good punching bag. He is making a political point about the power structure of America, and how corporations as exemplified by Microsoft can generate almost instant control over their own futures despite governmental balances meant to keep corporate power in check.
So all I wonder is "Where is your 2004 campaign site, Jon?" I'm half way serious in this... if you are willing to make yourself a political demagogue for this cause, I'm willing to make a cash contribution, and probably even a vote. Power to the people, god damnit!
For a long time now we have all argued that Marx was mistaken; that even if an eventual surplus of wealth would eventually cause a transition to more socialist ideals, it wouldn't require bloody revolution to effect that change. Marx, we keep telling ourselves, was simply a product of his times.
But with people in a previous thread seriously arguing that corporations should "have no moral obligations" something is seriously out of whack, and I'd be highly surprised if this imbalance between the rights and duties of individuals and corporations doesn't come to a head. And soon too, if the pendulum doesn't start swinging back pretty quickly.
I suppose you could purposely go out to thieve some GPL'd source code, and wait for someone to sue you (the FSF is pretty good about protecting its rights for example) and let the blocks fall where they may. It could be an expensive hobby though (intentionally infringing on registered original works can bring IIRC treble damages plus all attorneys fees.)
Really though you don't need to martyr yourself or your company in this way. While it is true that GPL hasn't been tested in court, it does have quite a bit of established precedent. Many companies have been in violation of various aspects of the GPL at some point, and have voluntarily come back in compliance when the problem was pointed out to them, and that precedent helps other violators understand the potential risk in violating the license.
No, S/MIME and PGP both support addressing to multiple parties. You don't actually encrypt the whole message with the recipients public key (that would take forever to calculate anyway.) Instead PGP uses a symmetric key for encrypting the main message, and then encrypts that key with the assymetric algorithm, once for each recipient.