It's not illegal for corporations which engage in journalism to report the news, even when it's news of a boycott. Thanks for playing, please try again.
If a University or College did block all P2P traffic (as opposed to blocking just traffic that they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt was infringing a specific copyright holder's copyrights), I think it would be easy to make an argument that such action is unconstitutional.
Copyright, by it's very nature, only protects that which is an embodiment of a creative idea. ..in other words, speech. OpenOffice.org is speach, for example, and is legally distributed via P2P networks. Same for many Linux distros and other Free/Open Source software. If my P2P connection to download Open Source software was blocked, that would amount to illegal censorship. Theoretically, someone could also use P2P technology to distribute Audio or Video blogs or other 'journalism', so that could then be a violation of freedom of the press.
This whole spectrum auction makes me sick to my stomach, because they go about it the whole wrong way. Instead of auctioning off a monopoly on limited spectrum to the highest bidder, can't we come up with a more public-serving 'auction'? I mean, a highest bidder auction for something like this is akin to asking, "Whose willing to charge the american public the most amount of money to use radio frequencies"?
Why don't we turn that around, and have reverse-auctions for something like this. Not a lowest bidder auction, but rather an auction by whoever is willing to contractually agree to the lowest prices charged to consumers, or something like that? Then, they are legally bound to that price point, and if for some reason, they can no longer find it profitable to do business at that price, they can offer the spectrum back to the government to go through another round of auctioning, where maybe they can get it again at a higher price. . . if they aren't outbid by someone undercutting them.
Granted, it'd have to be slightly more complicated than this (the bidding process would need to include some kind of Service Level Agreement whereby the companies are bound to a certain level of customer service, what services are offered for the basic, contracted price (e.g. are they just offering voice at the contracted level, or are they also offering data, etc; what kind of access will other companies have to the customer base, etc).
But, my point is, if my government wants to serve me, as a citizen best, a highest-bidder auction is almost certainly not the way to do that, because it just drives prices up; instead the government should use the auction process to drive prices down while guaranteeing some base level of service, and maybe the auction process could take into account the additional charges for 'premium services'. Try to get the best deal for the citizens of the country, not the worst deal for them.
But here's the thing. The GGP says "we don't need IPv6" because NAT does everything *he* wants. You can still, I believe (I'm no IPv6 expert, and haven't played with it much, but if I get some free time it's something I want to play more with), do NAT with IPv6 if you really *want* to. My problem is that the attitude that "we don't need IPv6 because NAT solves the problem" is just wrong. It solves *some* problems, but not other problems.
Going to the points in your list:
1. Potentially, a Firewall, I think, could 'hide' the network behind it by blocking ICMP/Ping traffic as well as all TCP/UDP traffic that isn't explicitely allowed. I think a decent firewall could also implement similar techniques as NAT devices do to track when an incoming connection is related to an outbound connection (like for FTP where you have a 'command' socket, then when you transfer files, a data socket - though they have passive FTP which deals with that issue pretty nicely I think).
2. I'm not sure you couldn't do something like this without NAT - maybe by assigning multiple addresses to a single box? In any case, for situations where people really *need* NAT, it should still be possible with IPv6, I think?
3. Well, you could also use some sort of anonymizing proxy service, like Tor, perhaps. This particular point won't help most users, much. In the current IPv4 + NAT regime, a potential litigant could still track down the IPv4 address to the person who owns the NAT box, which is probably you, or your dad, roommate, etc.
4. Again, I think that to a large degree, a good firewall could accomplish much the same thing - again, the cracker has to penetrate the firewall (illegal) before accessing the internal network (except those ips/ports that are open on the firewall). I think that would still maintain a pretty high legal barrier.
5. God I hope my country's military is behind a super-good firewall. In fact, if computers are *that* sensitive, why are they on the Internet at all? And if other countries *aren't*? Well, what do I care - that's just to our advantage. *grin*. Seriously though, a good firewall should be able to hide your network fairly effectively, except to the extent that your network makes outbound connections which might be seen.
6. Setting up seperate, isolated subnets does not require NAT. That's not even an argument. Sure, you can use NAT for that. But, even with IPv4, there are like 2 seperate networks running through the same switches at my company. The switches and routers take care of isolating their traffic.
7. Ok, I'm no regulatory compliance expert, so I can't really speak to this, but why wouldn't a decently configured firewall accomplish the same "due dilligance"? It seems like *most* of the arguments people make for NAT are really arguments for *some kind* of firewall, but NAT is just one type of firewalling mechanism. But, again, I'll go back to the basic statement that IPv6 and NAT shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
Sorry, but I fail to see how *any* of these are an argument against IPv6, or that NAT isn't *the* solution for all problems. Some problems, maybe it is the best solution.
NAT is, well, better than nothing, which, currently, is your alternative. But I'd hardly call it an "elegant and awesome solution". IMO, ultimately, NAT sucks because you *do not have a globally routable address* for devices in your network. Sure, that gives some security benefits, but makes it a PITA when you do want to open connections directly to a computer or consumer electronic device in your network.
A few reasons you might want to have a public address inside your network:
* Direct VOIP telephony (SIP, Skype, various instant messenger clients, run a TeamSpeak Server), etc
* Running game servers, web server, mail server, etc
* Remote access (VNC, SSH, etc)
* Direct file transfer with a friend (I've, from time to time, run into problems with things like instant messenger client based file transfers not working behind a NAT - though they do seem to have somewhat alleviated that problem - I suspect by routing my file transfer through the IM network instead of directly to the other person), or P2P file sharing systems, like Bittorrent - yes, they can usually work behind NATs; but they work better if direct connections could be more easily made).
Yes, yes, I know about port forwarding. That's fine and dandy as long as you only have a single device per port that you want to allow incoming traffic to. Ultimately, IPv6 is a much better solution to the problem of address space limitations than is NAT. NAT usually requires software to do ugly hacks to get around the limitations of only allowing outbound connections. A simple firewall with every device having a global address is a better solution, because then I can open up as many ports to as many devices as I like, without having to worry about only allowing one device per port.
I've had a number of times where I've been extremely frustrated by NAT. Often times, if software isn't explicitly written with NAT in mind, and the problems it creates, then it won't work well in a NAT'ed network.
Saying that all business newsletters are spam isn't really true. *You* may not want it, and if it is being sent to you and you did not request it, then it is spam. I don't usually opt-in for newsletters either, but I recognize that users have a right to want to get a newsletter (maybe a gamer wants a quarterly newsletter highlighting new games their favorite studio is releasing, etc), and that businesses have a right to send newsletters to customers who *want* to receive them. The problem this generates is that businesses need to make sure someone doesn't mistakenly categorize them as spam, so that they now become blocked from all customers at that ISP, or even other ISP's that participate in the same RBL.
I don't think that, for the most part, the phone companies *care* about trying to give you the maximum bandwidth on such a connection. The interest that they *might* have for deploying faster data-rates over copper (or Fiber for that matter), is about allowing them to sell you additional services, such as Television, Movies-On-Demand, etc. They might bump up the Internet bandwidth some, just so that their marketting can try to claim to be competitive with Cable, but if telcos roll out high-bandwidth technologies, it's not because they think there is strong market demand for much faster internet access. It's because they want new revenue streams.
Just realized I should give some more details about *why* you might want to use VLC.
VLC has the ability to be controlled from multiple different types of clients/interfaces. There is a command line client (perfect for cron jobs), GUI client, and several network interfaces that would allow you to control it over the network (so you could, for example, roll your own easy-to-use scheduling program, and have the scheduling program control VLC over the network).
However, I'm not entirely sure about VLC being able to playback to special broadcast hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me if there is a way to get it to work.
Of course the "service sector" revolves around IP and the creation and maintainance of it.* The other kind of "service" is "would you like fries with that", but you can't build much of an economy on that.
That's a little short-sighted.
To reduce the service sector to either high-tech or fast food is a rather stupid thing to do. Last I checked "service" also included plumbers, electricians, construction workers, mechanics, nurses, doctors (practicing doctors instead of research doctors), lawyers, police and firemen, teachers, beauticians, and many many others professions, many of which pay decently, and make up a substantial part the economy. Some of those you might be able to argue are built around IP to some extent or another, but mostly, while they might be *skilled* professions, don't exactly revolve around IP.
"The next step is for the remaining counts to be presented, along with evidence, in court. Only after that happens will IBM's "guilt" or "innocence" of the (remaining) charges brought by SCO be determined."
Almost, but not quite right, if I understand the way courts work correctly (I'm definitely not a lawyer, but have tried to learn a few things). Before the case goes to trial, there is, I believe, one more phase to potentially enter, which I think IBM will want to enter with a vengeance.
That is dispositive motions. Dispositive motions occur after discovery and before trial. They decide matters of law, as opposed to matters of fact. What does that mean, you ask? Let me give you an example.
One of SCO's claims is that SCO alleges that IBM violated its contract by porting JFS to Linux, because SCO claims that, because JFS was implemented on AIX at one point, and so, according to SCO's theory, is somehow a derrivative work of AIX, which is a derrivative of Unix, and so governed by the AIX contract. Now, IBM does not deny that it ported JFS to Linux. So, the question is, was IBM's contribution of JFS to Linux improper? That is a matter of law. First, it must be decided whether JFS is a derrivative that would be covered by the AIX contracts - a Jury is not the proper entity to make that legal interpretation, so a Judge would do that before trial; next *if* JFS is a derrivative, the contract needs to be interpreted to determine whether what IBM did was actually prohibited by the contract - again, it is not appropriate for contract interpretation to be done by juries (or at least, my understanding is that is how US jurisprudence is setup, I could be wrong).
So, since the parties don't contest the basic facts, but contest whether or not IBM violated it's contracts by it's actions, Judge Kimball can, before the trial, dispose of parts of the case that come down to legal interpretations rather than a question of fact (a question of fact would be "Did IBM contribute JFS to Linux?", but that is not being denied by IBM, so a jury never needs to consider that question).
Another example would be claims based on un-proven legal theories put forward by SCO. SCO claims a legal theory of misappropriating SCO IP by telling Linux developers how NOT to solve a problem that AIX, Dynix/PTX, or Unix solved badly. Judge Wells referred to these types of claims as the 'theory of negative know-how'. That is, IBM had some Dynix people give advice to the Linux developers on how NOT to approach a kernel logging problem, because Dynix had tried to solve the problem using one technique that didn't work out very well.
SCO alleges that because IBM developers shared knowledge learned about what methods NOT to use to solve a problem as a misappropriation of SCO Methods and Concepts. There are at least 2 (maybe more) potential problems that a Judge must consider for these claims. One is, the logging system that is being referred to was never a part of SCO Unix - it was a part of Dynix/PTX, developed by Dynix. So, as above, there is the question of whether or not Dynix's logging system would even be covered by the Unix contracts. Then the next question becomes, is this legal theory of negative know-how even valid? Is it wrong to tell someone how NOT to solve a problem based on your knowledge of one implementation.
Then there is the matter that potentially some of the code that SCO is claiming was improperly contributed does not fall under rights that SCO may or may not hold to Unix - SCO may not even have the right to bring these lawsuits, because Novell claims to still own Unix, and that SCO just has the right to sub-license it or something like that. Even if they have the right to bring this action, some of the code they allege is misappropriated might be legally useable by Linux because it came from BSD, or because it is part of the public Unix specification maintained by the Open Group, which anyone is, I believe, free to implement.
And the small matter of the fact that Caldera/SCO distributed much
"However, does the US expect half the world to come marching in? Because last I checked, the US military budget is half of the annual spendings on defense worldwide. Yes, that's right folks, the US spends half of all the money spent on defense. Also, 80% of the increase in military spending was due to the US last year."
While those are some interesting statements, I have some questions/comments about them:
1) Adjusted for differences in currency valuation (vis a vis China, India, just about everybody else), do those numbers still come out like that? Or does the US drop to less than half? China could 'spend less' on it's military and still be easily keeping up with, *or* outpacing, the US.
2) It can be argued that it is critical for the US to spend a seemingly larger amount than other countries, such as China, India, Indonesia - what do all those countries have in common? Larger populations than the US. The US *cannot* win an old-fashioned war of attrition if it came to it. The US needs to stay ahead of potential aggressors (I don't really expect any of those nations, particularly Indonesia, to try to mount any wars against the US, but if it came to it. ..) technologically/militarily, because we cannot win a war of numbers against those nations, or even if a bunch of smaller nations allied together against us to form a 500 million man army with accompanying ships, planes, tanks, bombs, etc, etc.
Now, that said, do we really need to be spending as much as we do on Defense? Possibly not. That money might better be spent on diplomatic and humanitarian efforts to improve our foreign relations. But, the best foreign relations in the world won't do you much good if an ambitious nation decided that you are a weak target, ripe for acquisition. Although, honestly, because of our nuclear arsenal, we could probably get by with a fairly minimal military. While terrorists might be a problem for us, I think our nuclear stockpile alone is sufficient reason for China or anyone else to leave us alone. (Is it any wonder nations like Korea and Iran want nuclear weapons technology? Can't say I blame em - not that I'm comfortable with them having nukes, but not having nukes in the modern world is almost like not having a military, and with the US having occupied Iraq, I could understand the Iranians being nervous).
So, it's not just "[My] definition of pagiarism only" - it appears that is the common dictionary definition of the word. There is a difference between plagiarize, and infringe copyright, and while they are both illegal, they aren't synonyms.
As for bloggers, it's a given that probably 90% of bloggers aren't very good, and aren't worth paying much attention to. If a blogger has to just copy other people's material in order to have content, I'm sure not gonna pay any attention to them - I'll go read the people they are copying *from*, instead. And if someone else think's that a particular blogger is violating their copyright, well, we already have laws about that, and they can try to enforce their copyright. Whether a blogger can get away with copying 'too much' material has nothing to do with "people like [me]", or what definition we use - that's between the person they infringed, the blogger, their lawyers, and the judge.
Parent is correct - plagiarism is claiming as your original work, someone else's work. If you attribute the work, it is clearly not plagiarism, and not a 'gray area'. The only 'gray area', I would say, would be copyright violation. It is fair use to quote someone else. But, at what point of copying large blocks of someone else's copyrighted material do you cross the line from fair use to copyright infringement?
Personally, I would err on the side of fair use - particularly if the bloggers are adding significant amounts of criticism/commentary (for example, Groklaw recently commented on the blog of some ZDNet analyst, and PJ included almost the entire text of the blog entry - but that is because she was doing a point by point rebuttal of his tripe - that should be considered fair use, because it's almost impossible to rebut in entirety, if you cannot quote in entirety). If they copy 5 pages of article text and add a 3 line summary/critique at the top, that, to me, would not be fair use.
The top-level reviewer seems to be glossing over the fact that FFXI has had some pretty major problems since day 1. He tries to soften it by saying "the game is showing it's age", as if some of the crappy game design decisions that Square made when designing the game originally were ok by the standards of the year, what was it, 2003? 2004? That wasn't that long ago, and FFXI had some true problems from the day it launched that have never been addressed, as attested to by the reviewer himself.
No new player/character tutorial? Must be about the only MMOG I've ever seen that didn't have something like that. Even Ultima Online, which I started playing in about the year 2000 (and it was already like 4 years old by then) had a new player tutorial (ok, ok, maybe UO didn't when it launched, but the point is, by the year 2000, a new player tutorial was pretty standard fare).
But that's just one thing. In playing the game, I noticed just many, small, but irritating game design decisions that the Square developers made. One time a friend of mine 'mailed' me some items in game. I wasn't able to get on FFXI right away, and he was complaining to me after a few days that until I pick up the items, *he* can't mail anything else to anyone else. What a stupid mail system! (although, I *will* give them kudos for having a mail system at all, since almost no other mmogs do, but still, the implementation was rather retarded).
And, while this isn't something that is exclusive to FFXI, it bugs the heck out of me when MMOGs give you faster experience/loot for going around killing stuff 2 levels lower than you, then stuff at your level or even a level or two above you. Granted, I never played a character past level 14, so maybe this was a low-end phenomenon, but if you paired up with someone, and went and fought something that was an actual challenge, it might take you one to three minutes to kill the thing, and you might each get like 50 experience. Or, you could solo kill stuff two to three levels lower than you, where you kill it in about 10-20 seconds, get 20-30 experience, and go kill another low-end monster 10 feet away immediately, and in the same 3 minutes you might get 100-300 exp, *at not risk*. I just think that's shi-tastic game design.
I really wanted to like FFXI, as I have liked quite a few of the Final Fantasy console games, but having played quite a few other MMORPG, while FFXI has a few cool things, things that I like, mostly it was boring grinding, with a poorly designed user interface, and too much reliance on external sources for game info (they really need more in-game information, like, for example, you can get food, and the food has certain effects - well, it's difficult to tell in game what the effects of any given food are before you eat it, and even after eating it, it can be difficult to tell).
Some might think I'm being too nitpicky, and maybe I am, but I just feel that, in a thousand small ways I keep finding things about FFXI that I don't like, even though I *want* to like it (I discover more every time I play, which is part of the reason I've almost stopped playing, and will probably soon cancel my account. YMMV, but I really think that FFXI was in many ways 'outdated' when it was released (and it some other ways, it's ahead of other MMOGs - I suppose that's true of all of them, but I just found others that I've found just more plain fun than FFXI).
I just bought a new Dell LCD monitor through a reseller. I woulda been happy to buy it through Dell, but it was actually *cheaper* buying it from a reseller, go figure.
Government legislated control of Internet traffic management is exactly what it means for our government to keep us free.
Nonsense. If a private company providing a service in a market where many other companies are doing the same wants to offer special pricing or performance options to customers that want to pay for such, they are (or should be) free to do so. It's no "distortion" of the market to change your offering to suit your own business objectives. You, as a customer, can just "distort" it right back by taking your business to another provider that suits your tastes.
While this is generally true, part of the idea behind regulation is to avoid complete messes of companies screwing up the market for their own gain. That is, sacrificing the public good for their own profit. For many years the government has regulated telephone, television, etc. While some people would argue this isn't a fully good thing, I think it flows from a fundamentally justified basis - the "Don't pee in the pool" rule. Absolute freedom would mean you can do anything you please - go around murdering other people, pee in the pool, or screw up the internet by putting artificial restrictions and blocks on it. If today we say that it's OK (for an example) for SBC (which has a partnership with Yahoo) to degrade quality of service to other search engine/portal companies, tomorrow they'll be trying to completely block the other company unless that other company pays them a toll.
Ok, maybe that's not true, no one can predict the future, but I would say it's a strong possibility. In any case, the point I'm making is, societies establish Governments (at least Democratic governments) to fulfill various purposes, and one of those purposes is to impose rules for the common good. While you might argue that it is better to let companies do as they please, and let 'the market' sort it out, others would argue that letting the market sort it out guarantees that for some period of time (perhaps for an extremely long period of time), you will have a mess, because the market doesn't always 'sort out' everything in a fast, efficient manner.
We have government regulations about how cars and buildings and other stuff should be built, according to safety codes, to try to minimize the risk of death or serious injury from companies putting out stuff that kills people. One could argue that 'the market will sort it out', as people won't buy the cars that kill people, and won't buy the buildings that collapse. But without building codes, how do I as a buyer know that a company does shoddy workmanship that puts me in great danger? By reputation? By then it's too late - people have already been killed by the poor design/construction.
And the way the market tends to sort out such situations is by resolving down to maybe 1 or 2 or 3 established, trusted companies, (because people aren't going to risk buying a car from an new company if there isn't some sort of established 'guarantee' that the cars are safe) which isn't a good vigourous free market. I'd rather have the safety codes about how cars are designed and built, because I believe that actually *fosters* a free market in automobiles. I have a fair degree of confidence that, most likely, I can buy a car from *any* manufacturer and will be basically safe, because it conforms to US engineering codes for design and construction of automobiles (which codes are regularly updated as we learn more about how to safely design and construct vehicles).
I'm not particularly interested in picking a side in this argument (whether to regulate ISPs or not), myself, but the reason I'm responding is that it is *perfectly* reasonable for a democratic government, if the people so choose, to impose regulation on a market in order to support the common good. The libertarian ideal of letting the free market resolve the problems isn't always a good solution (it often is, but not always). Whether any particular regulation is a good or bad idea is an excercise
Am I the only one who does this? I know that gamers as a whole probably aren't known for their fiscal discipline and their ability to delay gratification. But, if you're not trying to buy the latest-greatest hardware and games, you can still satisfy the PC gaming urge at significant discounts. That tricked out state of the art system that costs $1200 right now? 6 months to a year from now you can buy the same system (or near equivalent) for like $500-$800. It'll be 'obsolete' by then, but will still play most of the games you'd ever want to play.
Same goes for games - that game that costs $50-60 will be in the bin for $20 or less in 3-6 months.
The down side (and for me and other people, this is somewhat of an upside really) to this is that to some extent you miss out on the 'cultural/social' aspects of the game - friends who are playing it now may have moved on to something else, most likely, by the time I play it. But, the upside is, for example, with multiplayer games, most of the rude, obnoxious, arrogant morons have already moved on to other things by the time I play an online game, and the people that are still playing are usually pretty cool.
With games like Morrowind, Oblivion, etc, by the time I play the game there's usually a lot of helpful fansites with guides, mods, etc where I can get the cool stuff that people have just finished, often times, developing, 3 to 6 months later (it takes time to develop maps, models, and other mods).
By just delaying for 3-6 months, you can often save yourself about %50 - not a shabby discount, and enough to make gaming much more affordable (though still a bit of an expensive hobby).
Honestly, I bought my current computer in, err, about 2001 I think, maybe 2000. It's an Athlon 900Mhz (overclocked to 1Ghz). I spent a little money over the years upgrading the graphics card and memory. It's starting to get long in the tooth at this point, but has had surprising longevity. Having to upgrade your computer "Every 6 months" (as some posters mentioned) is a bit of overkill. Really every 2 years is probably more than sufficient (especially if you are buying the games from 3-6 months ago).
I don't really follow Debian politics much. But, I remember seeing just last year that Brandon Robinson had been elected project lead (he too was planning to put Debian on a faster release cycle last year as I recall).
So, did Brandon resign the post, or did the Debian voters just decide that 1 year of Brandon was enough? I presume that Debian must elect a new leader annually? Are incumbents allowed to run for a second term? Did Brandon run again? Can anyone provide a post-mortem of Brandon's year - was it generally considered that he did a good job in the post?
Well,
I'll say that I have not tried all the different version control systems that are out on the market. I am familiar with our product, and the problems that our customers run into, because that is what I see on the helpdesk. So, from my helpdesk perspective, what I've seen is that most of our customers seem fairly happy with the product, and need feature assistance, as opposed to customers calling in frustrated that the product doesn't perform as advertised.
When I used the phrase the 'relative quality', I have no comparisons with other version control producst in mind, but rather just that, compared to other software I've supported, customers calling the helpdesk seem, on average (this is purely subjective, I'll admit) seem to be happier with the product, and encounter fewer problems, than with other products (not specifically version control products, just software in general) I have had to support.
I really think, ultimately, you read too much into my statement. The bottom line is, I honestly think it's a decent product, and people may want to check it out.
If anyone is looking for further information about the product ( we have a page which compares Surround SCM with Visual Source Safe, as an example), our website, which I linked in the original post, has a lot of information.
Let me start this with a disclaimer. I *am* an employee of Seapine Software, so I'm not exactly a dis-interested third party.
I work on the helpdesk for Seapine Software, a small software company that, for a decade, has concentrated on providing easy to use software for managing software development. One of our products is a GUI (we also provide a CLI as part of the package for those who need it) version control system, called Surround SCM. It is cross platform, supporting Windows, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS X for both the server and the client.
It is quite feature rich, and specifically, handles versioning of image files very well. It can be used to version any kind of file (text and binary alike), so it can be used outside of the Source Code Management market, that just happens to be our current target market. It is not Free/Open Source software, but compared to other commercial SCM/FVM (Source Code Management/File Version Management) offerings on the market, is very competitively priced.
As I work on the helpdesk, I get a good idea of the relative quality of our products (believe me, products that aren't very good aren't very pleasant to support), and Surround SCM is, from my perspective, a very strong product. We offer a trial download that you can use to evaluate the product for a month, to see if it fits your needs.
People, when they talk about support, on slashdot, seem to think that support simply means having full driver support for all the hardware, released as open source so that it can be added to the kernel, and viola, all Linux distros are supported. While this would be a great step in the right direction, and would be sufficient for most current Linux users, it's not sufficient for Dell, who would potentially be introducing many more users to Linux, and then need to support them.
The truth of the matter is, I think what Michael Dell is talking about is that, if they are going to have a "Linux Desktop", they presumably would be putting a distro on the desktop, at which point someone's gonna be ticked that they are 'choosing winners and losers'. Someone suggested offering 5 or 10 Linux distro images which customers can choose from. This is somewhat ridiculous too, because then their Dell call-center helpdesk agents have to be able to remember differences between 5 to 10 Linux distros when trying to assist customers with problems (e.g., if someone calls in with an Apache question, does this particular distro store the configuration in/etc/httpd,/etc/apache,/etc/apache2, etc; and when you find the right directory, some distros have 'traditional' httpd.conf file, while others [Debian as one example, if you have apache2 installed] have an httpd.conf file that is included by another file, like apache2.conf, but the other file is the 'real' conf file for that build of Apache, etc]).
This is what Michael Dell is talking about when he says all the distros need to converge on a common core. All the files and configuration for stuff like apache, samba, X, KDE or GNOME, etc, need to be exactly the same across all distros so that support people aren't kept guessing at where stuff is and how it's setup. Even Dell CANNOT probably really afford to support multiple distros across thousands of customers (maybe if they ever reached the point where they had millions of customers who'd bought Linux desktops from them, they could afford to support multiple distros, but not from the start).
I gotta wonder, maybe this story is true, but why would confidential info, like Medical records, credit card numbers, etc, be being sent as clear-text email? I could maybe see SAT scores, but I don't think even that would be.
If anyone I did business with sent me confidential info over email, and it wasn't encrypted, I'd be royally ticked, and sue them for being so negligent about protecting my info.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not illegal for corporations which engage in journalism to report the news, even when it's news of a boycott. Thanks for playing, please try again.
If a University or College did block all P2P traffic (as opposed to blocking just traffic that they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt was infringing a specific copyright holder's copyrights), I think it would be easy to make an argument that such action is unconstitutional.
.in other words, speech. OpenOffice.org is speach, for example, and is legally distributed via P2P networks. Same for many Linux distros and other Free/Open Source software. If my P2P connection to download Open Source software was blocked, that would amount to illegal censorship. Theoretically, someone could also use P2P technology to distribute Audio or Video blogs or other 'journalism', so that could then be a violation of freedom of the press.
Copyright, by it's very nature, only protects that which is an embodiment of a creative idea. .
This whole spectrum auction makes me sick to my stomach, because they go about it the whole wrong way. Instead of auctioning off a monopoly on limited spectrum to the highest bidder, can't we come up with a more public-serving 'auction'? I mean, a highest bidder auction for something like this is akin to asking, "Whose willing to charge the american public the most amount of money to use radio frequencies"?
Why don't we turn that around, and have reverse-auctions for something like this. Not a lowest bidder auction, but rather an auction by whoever is willing to contractually agree to the lowest prices charged to consumers, or something like that? Then, they are legally bound to that price point, and if for some reason, they can no longer find it profitable to do business at that price, they can offer the spectrum back to the government to go through another round of auctioning, where maybe they can get it again at a higher price. . . if they aren't outbid by someone undercutting them.
Granted, it'd have to be slightly more complicated than this (the bidding process would need to include some kind of Service Level Agreement whereby the companies are bound to a certain level of customer service, what services are offered for the basic, contracted price (e.g. are they just offering voice at the contracted level, or are they also offering data, etc; what kind of access will other companies have to the customer base, etc).
But, my point is, if my government wants to serve me, as a citizen best, a highest-bidder auction is almost certainly not the way to do that, because it just drives prices up; instead the government should use the auction process to drive prices down while guaranteeing some base level of service, and maybe the auction process could take into account the additional charges for 'premium services'. Try to get the best deal for the citizens of the country, not the worst deal for them.
But here's the thing. The GGP says "we don't need IPv6" because NAT does everything *he* wants. You can still, I believe (I'm no IPv6 expert, and haven't played with it much, but if I get some free time it's something I want to play more with), do NAT with IPv6 if you really *want* to. My problem is that the attitude that "we don't need IPv6 because NAT solves the problem" is just wrong. It solves *some* problems, but not other problems.
Going to the points in your list:
1. Potentially, a Firewall, I think, could 'hide' the network behind it by blocking ICMP/Ping traffic as well as all TCP/UDP traffic that isn't explicitely allowed. I think a decent firewall could also implement similar techniques as NAT devices do to track when an incoming connection is related to an outbound connection (like for FTP where you have a 'command' socket, then when you transfer files, a data socket - though they have passive FTP which deals with that issue pretty nicely I think).
2. I'm not sure you couldn't do something like this without NAT - maybe by assigning multiple addresses to a single box? In any case, for situations where people really *need* NAT, it should still be possible with IPv6, I think?
3. Well, you could also use some sort of anonymizing proxy service, like Tor, perhaps. This particular point won't help most users, much. In the current IPv4 + NAT regime, a potential litigant could still track down the IPv4 address to the person who owns the NAT box, which is probably you, or your dad, roommate, etc.
4. Again, I think that to a large degree, a good firewall could accomplish much the same thing - again, the cracker has to penetrate the firewall (illegal) before accessing the internal network (except those ips/ports that are open on the firewall). I think that would still maintain a pretty high legal barrier.
5. God I hope my country's military is behind a super-good firewall. In fact, if computers are *that* sensitive, why are they on the Internet at all? And if other countries *aren't*? Well, what do I care - that's just to our advantage. *grin*. Seriously though, a good firewall should be able to hide your network fairly effectively, except to the extent that your network makes outbound connections which might be seen.
6. Setting up seperate, isolated subnets does not require NAT. That's not even an argument. Sure, you can use NAT for that. But, even with IPv4, there are like 2 seperate networks running through the same switches at my company. The switches and routers take care of isolating their traffic.
7. Ok, I'm no regulatory compliance expert, so I can't really speak to this, but why wouldn't a decently configured firewall accomplish the same "due dilligance"? It seems like *most* of the arguments people make for NAT are really arguments for *some kind* of firewall, but NAT is just one type of firewalling mechanism. But, again, I'll go back to the basic statement that IPv6 and NAT shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
Sorry, but I fail to see how *any* of these are an argument against IPv6, or that NAT isn't *the* solution for all problems. Some problems, maybe it is the best solution.
NAT is, well, better than nothing, which, currently, is your alternative. But I'd hardly call it an "elegant and awesome solution". IMO, ultimately, NAT sucks because you *do not have a globally routable address* for devices in your network. Sure, that gives some security benefits, but makes it a PITA when you do want to open connections directly to a computer or consumer electronic device in your network.
A few reasons you might want to have a public address inside your network:
* Direct VOIP telephony (SIP, Skype, various instant messenger clients, run a TeamSpeak Server), etc
* Running game servers, web server, mail server, etc
* Remote access (VNC, SSH, etc)
* Direct file transfer with a friend (I've, from time to time, run into problems with things like instant messenger client based file transfers not working behind a NAT - though they do seem to have somewhat alleviated that problem - I suspect by routing my file transfer through the IM network instead of directly to the other person), or P2P file sharing systems, like Bittorrent - yes, they can usually work behind NATs; but they work better if direct connections could be more easily made).
Yes, yes, I know about port forwarding. That's fine and dandy as long as you only have a single device per port that you want to allow incoming traffic to. Ultimately, IPv6 is a much better solution to the problem of address space limitations than is NAT. NAT usually requires software to do ugly hacks to get around the limitations of only allowing outbound connections. A simple firewall with every device having a global address is a better solution, because then I can open up as many ports to as many devices as I like, without having to worry about only allowing one device per port.
I've had a number of times where I've been extremely frustrated by NAT. Often times, if software isn't explicitly written with NAT in mind, and the problems it creates, then it won't work well in a NAT'ed network.
Saying that all business newsletters are spam isn't really true. *You* may not want it, and if it is being sent to you and you did not request it, then it is spam. I don't usually opt-in for newsletters either, but I recognize that users have a right to want to get a newsletter (maybe a gamer wants a quarterly newsletter highlighting new games their favorite studio is releasing, etc), and that businesses have a right to send newsletters to customers who *want* to receive them. The problem this generates is that businesses need to make sure someone doesn't mistakenly categorize them as spam, so that they now become blocked from all customers at that ISP, or even other ISP's that participate in the same RBL.
I don't think that, for the most part, the phone companies *care* about trying to give you the maximum bandwidth on such a connection. The interest that they *might* have for deploying faster data-rates over copper (or Fiber for that matter), is about allowing them to sell you additional services, such as Television, Movies-On-Demand, etc. They might bump up the Internet bandwidth some, just so that their marketting can try to claim to be competitive with Cable, but if telcos roll out high-bandwidth technologies, it's not because they think there is strong market demand for much faster internet access. It's because they want new revenue streams.
Just realized I should give some more details about *why* you might want to use VLC.
VLC has the ability to be controlled from multiple different types of clients/interfaces. There is a command line client (perfect for cron jobs), GUI client, and several network interfaces that would allow you to control it over the network (so you could, for example, roll your own easy-to-use scheduling program, and have the scheduling program control VLC over the network).
However, I'm not entirely sure about VLC being able to playback to special broadcast hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me if there is a way to get it to work.
I think you are Looking for the Video Lan project, specifically the VLC player:
VLC
Of course the "service sector" revolves around IP and the creation and maintainance of it.* The other kind of "service" is "would you like fries with that", but you can't build much of an economy on that.
That's a little short-sighted.
To reduce the service sector to either high-tech or fast food is a rather stupid thing to do. Last I checked "service" also included plumbers, electricians, construction workers, mechanics, nurses, doctors (practicing doctors instead of research doctors), lawyers, police and firemen, teachers, beauticians, and many many others professions, many of which pay decently, and make up a substantial part the economy. Some of those you might be able to argue are built around IP to some extent or another, but mostly, while they might be *skilled* professions, don't exactly revolve around IP.
"The next step is for the remaining counts to be presented, along with evidence, in court. Only after that happens will IBM's "guilt" or "innocence" of the (remaining) charges brought by SCO be determined."
Almost, but not quite right, if I understand the way courts work correctly (I'm definitely not a lawyer, but have tried to learn a few things). Before the case goes to trial, there is, I believe, one more phase to potentially enter, which I think IBM will want to enter with a vengeance.
That is dispositive motions. Dispositive motions occur after discovery and before trial. They decide matters of law, as opposed to matters of fact. What does that mean, you ask? Let me give you an example.
One of SCO's claims is that SCO alleges that IBM violated its contract by porting JFS to Linux, because SCO claims that, because JFS was implemented on AIX at one point, and so, according to SCO's theory, is somehow a derrivative work of AIX, which is a derrivative of Unix, and so governed by the AIX contract. Now, IBM does not deny that it ported JFS to Linux. So, the question is, was IBM's contribution of JFS to Linux improper? That is a matter of law. First, it must be decided whether JFS is a derrivative that would be covered by the AIX contracts - a Jury is not the proper entity to make that legal interpretation, so a Judge would do that before trial; next *if* JFS is a derrivative, the contract needs to be interpreted to determine whether what IBM did was actually prohibited by the contract - again, it is not appropriate for contract interpretation to be done by juries (or at least, my understanding is that is how US jurisprudence is setup, I could be wrong).
So, since the parties don't contest the basic facts, but contest whether or not IBM violated it's contracts by it's actions, Judge Kimball can, before the trial, dispose of parts of the case that come down to legal interpretations rather than a question of fact (a question of fact would be "Did IBM contribute JFS to Linux?", but that is not being denied by IBM, so a jury never needs to consider that question).
Another example would be claims based on un-proven legal theories put forward by SCO. SCO claims a legal theory of misappropriating SCO IP by telling Linux developers how NOT to solve a problem that AIX, Dynix/PTX, or Unix solved badly. Judge Wells referred to these types of claims as the 'theory of negative know-how'. That is, IBM had some Dynix people give advice to the Linux developers on how NOT to approach a kernel logging problem, because Dynix had tried to solve the problem using one technique that didn't work out very well.
SCO alleges that because IBM developers shared knowledge learned about what methods NOT to use to solve a problem as a misappropriation of SCO Methods and Concepts. There are at least 2 (maybe more) potential problems that a Judge must consider for these claims. One is, the logging system that is being referred to was never a part of SCO Unix - it was a part of Dynix/PTX, developed by Dynix. So, as above, there is the question of whether or not Dynix's logging system would even be covered by the Unix contracts. Then the next question becomes, is this legal theory of negative know-how even valid? Is it wrong to tell someone how NOT to solve a problem based on your knowledge of one implementation.
Then there is the matter that potentially some of the code that SCO is claiming was improperly contributed does not fall under rights that SCO may or may not hold to Unix - SCO may not even have the right to bring these lawsuits, because Novell claims to still own Unix, and that SCO just has the right to sub-license it or something like that. Even if they have the right to bring this action, some of the code they allege is misappropriated might be legally useable by Linux because it came from BSD, or because it is part of the public Unix specification maintained by the Open Group, which anyone is, I believe, free to implement.
And the small matter of the fact that Caldera/SCO distributed much
"However, does the US expect half the world to come marching in? Because last I checked, the US military budget is half of the annual spendings on defense worldwide. Yes, that's right folks, the US spends half of all the money spent on defense. Also, 80% of the increase in military spending was due to the US last year."
.) technologically/militarily, because we cannot win a war of numbers against those nations, or even if a bunch of smaller nations allied together against us to form a 500 million man army with accompanying ships, planes, tanks, bombs, etc, etc.
While those are some interesting statements, I have some questions/comments about them:
1) Adjusted for differences in currency valuation (vis a vis China, India, just about everybody else), do those numbers still come out like that? Or does the US drop to less than half? China could 'spend less' on it's military and still be easily keeping up with, *or* outpacing, the US.
2) It can be argued that it is critical for the US to spend a seemingly larger amount than other countries, such as China, India, Indonesia - what do all those countries have in common? Larger populations than the US. The US *cannot* win an old-fashioned war of attrition if it came to it. The US needs to stay ahead of potential aggressors (I don't really expect any of those nations, particularly Indonesia, to try to mount any wars against the US, but if it came to it. .
Now, that said, do we really need to be spending as much as we do on Defense? Possibly not. That money might better be spent on diplomatic and humanitarian efforts to improve our foreign relations. But, the best foreign relations in the world won't do you much good if an ambitious nation decided that you are a weak target, ripe for acquisition. Although, honestly, because of our nuclear arsenal, we could probably get by with a fairly minimal military. While terrorists might be a problem for us, I think our nuclear stockpile alone is sufficient reason for China or anyone else to leave us alone. (Is it any wonder nations like Korea and Iran want nuclear weapons technology? Can't say I blame em - not that I'm comfortable with them having nukes, but not having nukes in the modern world is almost like not having a military, and with the US having occupied Iraq, I could understand the Iranians being nervous).
Anybody else see a striking similarity between the winner, and the Mozilla "Modern" theme?
The Cambridge Dictionary
Mirriam-Webster Dictionary
So, it's not just "[My] definition of pagiarism only" - it appears that is the common dictionary definition of the word. There is a difference between plagiarize, and infringe copyright, and while they are both illegal, they aren't synonyms.
As for bloggers, it's a given that probably 90% of bloggers aren't very good, and aren't worth paying much attention to. If a blogger has to just copy other people's material in order to have content, I'm sure not gonna pay any attention to them - I'll go read the people they are copying *from*, instead. And if someone else think's that a particular blogger is violating their copyright, well, we already have laws about that, and they can try to enforce their copyright. Whether a blogger can get away with copying 'too much' material has nothing to do with "people like [me]", or what definition we use - that's between the person they infringed, the blogger, their lawyers, and the judge.
Parent is correct - plagiarism is claiming as your original work, someone else's work. If you attribute the work, it is clearly not plagiarism, and not a 'gray area'. The only 'gray area', I would say, would be copyright violation. It is fair use to quote someone else. But, at what point of copying large blocks of someone else's copyrighted material do you cross the line from fair use to copyright infringement?
Personally, I would err on the side of fair use - particularly if the bloggers are adding significant amounts of criticism/commentary (for example, Groklaw recently commented on the blog of some ZDNet analyst, and PJ included almost the entire text of the blog entry - but that is because she was doing a point by point rebuttal of his tripe - that should be considered fair use, because it's almost impossible to rebut in entirety, if you cannot quote in entirety). If they copy 5 pages of article text and add a 3 line summary/critique at the top, that, to me, would not be fair use.
The top-level reviewer seems to be glossing over the fact that FFXI has had some pretty major problems since day 1. He tries to soften it by saying "the game is showing it's age", as if some of the crappy game design decisions that Square made when designing the game originally were ok by the standards of the year, what was it, 2003? 2004? That wasn't that long ago, and FFXI had some true problems from the day it launched that have never been addressed, as attested to by the reviewer himself.
No new player/character tutorial? Must be about the only MMOG I've ever seen that didn't have something like that. Even Ultima Online, which I started playing in about the year 2000 (and it was already like 4 years old by then) had a new player tutorial (ok, ok, maybe UO didn't when it launched, but the point is, by the year 2000, a new player tutorial was pretty standard fare).
But that's just one thing. In playing the game, I noticed just many, small, but irritating game design decisions that the Square developers made. One time a friend of mine 'mailed' me some items in game. I wasn't able to get on FFXI right away, and he was complaining to me after a few days that until I pick up the items, *he* can't mail anything else to anyone else. What a stupid mail system! (although, I *will* give them kudos for having a mail system at all, since almost no other mmogs do, but still, the implementation was rather retarded).
And, while this isn't something that is exclusive to FFXI, it bugs the heck out of me when MMOGs give you faster experience/loot for going around killing stuff 2 levels lower than you, then stuff at your level or even a level or two above you. Granted, I never played a character past level 14, so maybe this was a low-end phenomenon, but if you paired up with someone, and went and fought something that was an actual challenge, it might take you one to three minutes to kill the thing, and you might each get like 50 experience. Or, you could solo kill stuff two to three levels lower than you, where you kill it in about 10-20 seconds, get 20-30 experience, and go kill another low-end monster 10 feet away immediately, and in the same 3 minutes you might get 100-300 exp, *at not risk*. I just think that's shi-tastic game design.
I really wanted to like FFXI, as I have liked quite a few of the Final Fantasy console games, but having played quite a few other MMORPG, while FFXI has a few cool things, things that I like, mostly it was boring grinding, with a poorly designed user interface, and too much reliance on external sources for game info (they really need more in-game information, like, for example, you can get food, and the food has certain effects - well, it's difficult to tell in game what the effects of any given food are before you eat it, and even after eating it, it can be difficult to tell).
Some might think I'm being too nitpicky, and maybe I am, but I just feel that, in a thousand small ways I keep finding things about FFXI that I don't like, even though I *want* to like it (I discover more every time I play, which is part of the reason I've almost stopped playing, and will probably soon cancel my account. YMMV, but I really think that FFXI was in many ways 'outdated' when it was released (and it some other ways, it's ahead of other MMOGs - I suppose that's true of all of them, but I just found others that I've found just more plain fun than FFXI).
I just bought a new Dell LCD monitor through a reseller. I woulda been happy to buy it through Dell, but it was actually *cheaper* buying it from a reseller, go figure.
While this is generally true, part of the idea behind regulation is to avoid complete messes of companies screwing up the market for their own gain. That is, sacrificing the public good for their own profit. For many years the government has regulated telephone, television, etc. While some people would argue this isn't a fully good thing, I think it flows from a fundamentally justified basis - the "Don't pee in the pool" rule. Absolute freedom would mean you can do anything you please - go around murdering other people, pee in the pool, or screw up the internet by putting artificial restrictions and blocks on it. If today we say that it's OK (for an example) for SBC (which has a partnership with Yahoo) to degrade quality of service to other search engine/portal companies, tomorrow they'll be trying to completely block the other company unless that other company pays them a toll.
Ok, maybe that's not true, no one can predict the future, but I would say it's a strong possibility. In any case, the point I'm making is, societies establish Governments (at least Democratic governments) to fulfill various purposes, and one of those purposes is to impose rules for the common good. While you might argue that it is better to let companies do as they please, and let 'the market' sort it out, others would argue that letting the market sort it out guarantees that for some period of time (perhaps for an extremely long period of time), you will have a mess, because the market doesn't always 'sort out' everything in a fast, efficient manner.
We have government regulations about how cars and buildings and other stuff should be built, according to safety codes, to try to minimize the risk of death or serious injury from companies putting out stuff that kills people. One could argue that 'the market will sort it out', as people won't buy the cars that kill people, and won't buy the buildings that collapse. But without building codes, how do I as a buyer know that a company does shoddy workmanship that puts me in great danger? By reputation? By then it's too late - people have already been killed by the poor design/construction.
And the way the market tends to sort out such situations is by resolving down to maybe 1 or 2 or 3 established, trusted companies, (because people aren't going to risk buying a car from an new company if there isn't some sort of established 'guarantee' that the cars are safe) which isn't a good vigourous free market. I'd rather have the safety codes about how cars are designed and built, because I believe that actually *fosters* a free market in automobiles. I have a fair degree of confidence that, most likely, I can buy a car from *any* manufacturer and will be basically safe, because it conforms to US engineering codes for design and construction of automobiles (which codes are regularly updated as we learn more about how to safely design and construct vehicles).
I'm not particularly interested in picking a side in this argument (whether to regulate ISPs or not), myself, but the reason I'm responding is that it is *perfectly* reasonable for a democratic government, if the people so choose, to impose regulation on a market in order to support the common good. The libertarian ideal of letting the free market resolve the problems isn't always a good solution (it often is, but not always). Whether any particular regulation is a good or bad idea is an excercise
Am I the only one who does this? I know that gamers as a whole probably aren't known for their fiscal discipline and their ability to delay gratification. But, if you're not trying to buy the latest-greatest hardware and games, you can still satisfy the PC gaming urge at significant discounts. That tricked out state of the art system that costs $1200 right now? 6 months to a year from now you can buy the same system (or near equivalent) for like $500-$800. It'll be 'obsolete' by then, but will still play most of the games you'd ever want to play.
Same goes for games - that game that costs $50-60 will be in the bin for $20 or less in 3-6 months.
The down side (and for me and other people, this is somewhat of an upside really) to this is that to some extent you miss out on the 'cultural/social' aspects of the game - friends who are playing it now may have moved on to something else, most likely, by the time I play it. But, the upside is, for example, with multiplayer games, most of the rude, obnoxious, arrogant morons have already moved on to other things by the time I play an online game, and the people that are still playing are usually pretty cool.
With games like Morrowind, Oblivion, etc, by the time I play the game there's usually a lot of helpful fansites with guides, mods, etc where I can get the cool stuff that people have just finished, often times, developing, 3 to 6 months later (it takes time to develop maps, models, and other mods).
By just delaying for 3-6 months, you can often save yourself about %50 - not a shabby discount, and enough to make gaming much more affordable (though still a bit of an expensive hobby).
Honestly, I bought my current computer in, err, about 2001 I think, maybe 2000. It's an Athlon 900Mhz (overclocked to 1Ghz). I spent a little money over the years upgrading the graphics card and memory. It's starting to get long in the tooth at this point, but has had surprising longevity. Having to upgrade your computer "Every 6 months" (as some posters mentioned) is a bit of overkill. Really every 2 years is probably more than sufficient (especially if you are buying the games from 3-6 months ago).
I don't really follow Debian politics much. But, I remember seeing just last year that Brandon Robinson had been elected project lead (he too was planning to put Debian on a faster release cycle last year as I recall).
So, did Brandon resign the post, or did the Debian voters just decide that 1 year of Brandon was enough? I presume that Debian must elect a new leader annually? Are incumbents allowed to run for a second term? Did Brandon run again? Can anyone provide a post-mortem of Brandon's year - was it generally considered that he did a good job in the post?
Well,
I'll say that I have not tried all the different version control systems that are out on the market. I am familiar with our product, and the problems that our customers run into, because that is what I see on the helpdesk. So, from my helpdesk perspective, what I've seen is that most of our customers seem fairly happy with the product, and need feature assistance, as opposed to customers calling in frustrated that the product doesn't perform as advertised.
When I used the phrase the 'relative quality', I have no comparisons with other version control producst in mind, but rather just that, compared to other software I've supported, customers calling the helpdesk seem, on average (this is purely subjective, I'll admit) seem to be happier with the product, and encounter fewer problems, than with other products (not specifically version control products, just software in general) I have had to support.
I really think, ultimately, you read too much into my statement. The bottom line is, I honestly think it's a decent product, and people may want to check it out.
If anyone is looking for further information about the product ( we have a page which compares Surround SCM with Visual Source Safe, as an example), our website, which I linked in the original post, has a lot of information.
Let me start this with a disclaimer. I *am* an employee of Seapine Software, so I'm not exactly a dis-interested third party.
I work on the helpdesk for Seapine Software, a small software company that, for a decade, has concentrated on providing easy to use software for managing software development. One of our products is a GUI (we also provide a CLI as part of the package for those who need it) version control system, called Surround SCM. It is cross platform, supporting Windows, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS X for both the server and the client.
It is quite feature rich, and specifically, handles versioning of image files very well. It can be used to version any kind of file (text and binary alike), so it can be used outside of the Source Code Management market, that just happens to be our current target market. It is not Free/Open Source software, but compared to other commercial SCM/FVM (Source Code Management/File Version Management) offerings on the market, is very competitively priced.
As I work on the helpdesk, I get a good idea of the relative quality of our products (believe me, products that aren't very good aren't very pleasant to support), and Surround SCM is, from my perspective, a very strong product. We offer a trial download that you can use to evaluate the product for a month, to see if it fits your needs.
scamp1 Audio pronunciation of "scamp" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (skmp)
n.
1. A rogue; a rascal.
2. A mischievous youngster.
How appropriate. . .
People, when they talk about support, on slashdot, seem to think that support simply means having full driver support for all the hardware, released as open source so that it can be added to the kernel, and viola, all Linux distros are supported. While this would be a great step in the right direction, and would be sufficient for most current Linux users, it's not sufficient for Dell, who would potentially be introducing many more users to Linux, and then need to support them.
/etc/httpd, /etc/apache, /etc/apache2, etc; and when you find the right directory, some distros have 'traditional' httpd.conf file, while others [Debian as one example, if you have apache2 installed] have an httpd.conf file that is included by another file, like apache2.conf, but the other file is the 'real' conf file for that build of Apache, etc]).
The truth of the matter is, I think what Michael Dell is talking about is that, if they are going to have a "Linux Desktop", they presumably would be putting a distro on the desktop, at which point someone's gonna be ticked that they are 'choosing winners and losers'. Someone suggested offering 5 or 10 Linux distro images which customers can choose from. This is somewhat ridiculous too, because then their Dell call-center helpdesk agents have to be able to remember differences between 5 to 10 Linux distros when trying to assist customers with problems (e.g., if someone calls in with an Apache question, does this particular distro store the configuration in
This is what Michael Dell is talking about when he says all the distros need to converge on a common core. All the files and configuration for stuff like apache, samba, X, KDE or GNOME, etc, need to be exactly the same across all distros so that support people aren't kept guessing at where stuff is and how it's setup. Even Dell CANNOT probably really afford to support multiple distros across thousands of customers (maybe if they ever reached the point where they had millions of customers who'd bought Linux desktops from them, they could afford to support multiple distros, but not from the start).
I gotta wonder, maybe this story is true, but why would confidential info, like Medical records, credit card numbers, etc, be being sent as clear-text email? I could maybe see SAT scores, but I don't think even that would be.
If anyone I did business with sent me confidential info over email, and it wasn't encrypted, I'd be royally ticked, and sue them for being so negligent about protecting my info.