digital\l\a\t\i\g\i\dDEC\C\E\D(etc...) has a history of playing the name game. All the way back to the 'Programmable Data Processor', their first complete computer.
Slashdot readers (and I definitely include myself in this statement) can learn a lot by watching the way Jon handles Linux Advocacy. It's amaazing.
And hope they can learn something from the author, who either manages to poorly use the english language, or fails to conduct even shallow research.
DEC is big in the Unix world because its founders, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, developed a version that helped carry the company to its prominence in the 1980s Ahem, Ken Olsen & snake oil?
Developed at Bell Labs in the late 1960s as a powerful but flexible system above grunt-level assembly language, Unix became the system of choice for developers in the flowering of the microcomputer world, partly because much of it could be shared freely between programmers. Sure, as long as you don't count the first several versions of UNIX. Or AT&Ts licensing. BSD UNIX? What is that?
Articles like this that play fast and loose with the facts are a dis-service to the public.
The phrase "party line" brings images of Brave New World. And maybe that's what we are facing. There's so much to keep up with. Sometimes it's nice to sit back and be content.
I wonder if MS is innovating in the consortium model, except that they think they are big enough to form a group all by themselves. Remember the X11 R6.4 scare? That was with a history of $0 information. Companies like MS don't have any significant open minded background to work from.
Subject: Slashdot A while ago, when I was more organized I was thinking about writing in to Ask Slashdot about the 'community'. At the time I thought it was really remarkable that such an open forum managed to stay coherent. I pondered the possibility of taking this reality into meat space. Even a little bit. Now I find myself of the opinion that things are coming apart. In far too many topics trolls make up the majority of visual space. Moderation seems to have taken a turn for the worse, marking posts because they are early. What is 'under-rated'? I love the idea, but Im not sure we can handle it at this point.
And the blame isn't 100% on the outside users. Things like software release announcements are getting a bit out of hand too. Something like the linux 2.2 release I can see. 2.2.15, that's pushing it. Is this slashdot, or fresh meat? Repeats of topics are silly too. I would be all for doing a search over the site before posting something new. Maybe when something resurfaces, a link to the previous discussion could be provided with updates.
couple things about this proposal: 1) heroes: Richard Stallman. Contributor: Richard Stallman Sorry, just bugs me.
2) heroes: librarians. No, not as a general rule, sorry. They're like cops. Some are good, some are bad. The job's a public servant (for public libraries of course).
3) potential opponents: Microsoft. Hello? Kerberos extensions. Could be predating the latest incident I suppose.
4) It says nice things. Like on a playground. Nothing new. Who is the target here?
The Fishman case, IIRC. Pretty much an issue of republication of freely distributed content. Again, IIRC. The KKK had a somewhat similar run in, inserting fliers into a free hardcopy newspaper. I dont recall the results
Ahh, but you miss a critical value in the MS Windows registry. If you corrupt the RPM database (*raises hand*), you don't have to reinstall the OS and applications!
No changelog in the 2.2 directory. No changelog in linux/ of the tarball In 2.2.14, I find a total of 5. In drivers/char, drivers/scsi, drivers/sound, fs, and fs/hfs. And looking at the char and scsi ones, they're all pretty old stuff.
A possible angle on this incident would be to take the moral high ground, as visibly as can be managed. Perhaps there is the slight possibility that closed source software developers who are a bit edgy about open source might be calmed a bit. While revenge is sweet for the short term, making open source philosophy appear a bit more friendly may see better returns over time
A secondary issue: Who does the selling? A successful opensource project can potentially be as much the work of active users as the project originator. There's an issue of trust brought into this dilemma. How many people are prepared to deal with such a situation? It seems to me that there's been a bit of, to borrow from Alan Greenspan, "irrational exuberance" displayed in recent history.
Im thinking that on one level, something like the internet is incompatible with privacy in everyday meatspace. The very miracle of internet's existance, a common set of communication protocols, requires revealing information. That is if you want a response. Things like anonymous remailers allow a bit of hiding, but in the end you still have to trust somebody.
I agree, but I think that it should be carried a step further. Not only should we fight invasions of personal liberties, we should explain to other why it is important. I see examples on a regular basis of people being trained to accept the established authorities into one more aspect of life. The common reaction is that it's not a big deal. The inconvience of going against the flow isn't worth an intangible concept.
Among the distasteful activities is the defence of those who you have a disagreement with. This comes up with KKK demonstrations. The same with the confederate flag. Add in a little scare, such as shooting, a bombing, or a theft of something with emotional significance, and the average person is lining up to be monitored.
Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet
on
The Eroded Self
·
· Score: 1
But there are boundaries. The tolerance of others. For most people, there will always be someone more powerful. If you are sufficiently loud, they tend to notice you. Many mediums have a method of cancelation. Someone out there is willing to use that power. How many times have you witnessed, in a manner, a web site fold under pressure from some corporation?
So why isn't anyone kicking in the door? Maybe your positive, or rather useful traits currently outweigh the advantages in stamping you out.
The one thing I see standing to hinder information collection and use is sheer numbers. It's hard to get a large group to stand still and be counted. This works to the disadvantage of retailers. I think that the answer is not so much targeting tech-oriented users, but rather making a larger portion of the population believe that they are in the know.
Do geeks want freedom? Or do they want more toys to play with? It's frustrating to be denied, for finacial reasons no less than any other. Free information batters down one more 'no'.
The concept of IP is a rather intellectual concept in itself. To what extent can any person really create something new? It's very difficult to do anything without building on what others have done. In a way, invention is merely synthesis. To take it to an extreme, how much credit do you give to the builder of something really fascinating, if they used legos?
It's a blurry line. I don;t give credit to the plumbers or the utility company when I am inspired while in the shower. And yet, I realise that the code I write after would be much less without the work of the compiler writers, and the CPU designers, and too many others to comprehend.
The issue with fetchmail is a different issue from traditional encryption techniques. Usually when you encrypt something, you have 3 parts. 1) the message 2) the algorithim 3) a key The third part is very important. With it, you can create variation, in a manner, of your algorithim. Use a big key, get lots of variations.
In order to avoid having the user type in one password to get another, something like fetchmail (or QNX's password storage, from what I gather), would have to eliminate the third part, leaving you with an invertible function (g of f(x) == x). IIRC, ESR thought that doing such a thing was silly, and decided not to waste the effort on it. It seems someone at QNX thought a bit more highly of it.
The processor must have on chip support for SMP. If they never allocated the die space for those SMP command, no amount of begging, praying or hacking will give you SMP. Since the Athalon has been out for a while and no one has produced an SMP machine from them, I'll say they never planned on it. Can someone else back me up or shot me down?
Say it ain't so! On the issue of SMP support, having support on the processor could certainly be a help. However, lacking it (processor ID) does not bar the possibility. Otherwise, things like 32 processor Xeon systems wouldn't fly, as IIRC, the processors only have support for 4 IDs.
On the Athlon, I've read that they do indeed have 'support' in the manner mentioned above. references:AMD
Ahh. Police in California ask you to take a breath test any time they feel like it. Refuse, and you lose your license for a year. Technically, you have your choice of tests, between breath, blood and urine. In practice, they give a second test if the first doesn't come out positive. As the second takes too long to confirm (blood and urine tests get sent off to a lab, with results taking weeks at times), it tends to stop there.
I've seen situations where things are going perhaps a bit too slowly, so out comes the accusations of intoxication. At which point, they throw a variety of field sobriety tests at the person, lock them in the back of the squad car, and proceed to search the person's vehicle.
Im guessing you've never tried to port a large program. Just because there is a common language does not mean that porting is a non-issue. While it may be ideal that every program that is written in C sticks to ANSI functions and syntax, sometimes this isn't convenient/efficient/interesting. So you probe in system specifici functionality. For an example of this, there the dldump() function in Solaris. To go a step further, some systems support concepts that don't quite mesh with C. String handling in VMS. Or, you could come across difference of opinions with C compilers. I've written code that GCC would handle without so much as a single warning, that the MIPS Pro compiler (SGI) would refuse to compile. The existance of a program on two platforms does not mean that they came from the same code, or use the same general implementation.
IIRC, MS lost it's UNIX producing rights (not the TOG sort) when it sold Xenix to SCO. Oh yeah, I dont think that TOG cares what you call Unix, as long as you give proper note, payment, etc to UNIX(TM)(R)(etc)
I dont think that thinking about bypassing a test is the same as thinking about killing. If this were the case, then you open up an infinite number of possibilities for allowable pre-meditation. Does filling the tank before a night of drinking count? It certainly is an enabling act. How about sharpening a knife that is later used to stab a person?
I also have to disagree that being able to use a breathalyser proves that a person should know that they cant drive. It's pretty easy to recall from past events that blowing into a tube makes the car work. Past experience might not cover knowing when enough is enough. This is looking alot like an analisys of how children learn. "To make the cookies, turn on the stove. Mom didnt burn herself, so I dont know anything about that"
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. See the comp.os.vms FAQ about how to port from VMS to OpenVMS.
If you want more confusion, look up MicroVMS, or VAX/VMS, or VAX-11/VMS. DEC, masters of the name change game.
digital\l\a\t\i\g\i\dDEC\C\E\D(etc...) has a history of playing the name game. All the way back to the 'Programmable Data Processor', their first complete computer.
Slashdot readers (and I definitely include myself in this statement) can learn a lot by watching the way Jon handles Linux Advocacy. It's amaazing.
And hope they can learn something from the author, who either manages to poorly use the english language, or fails to conduct even shallow research.
DEC is big in the Unix world because its founders, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, developed a version that helped carry the company to its prominence in the 1980s
Ahem, Ken Olsen & snake oil?
Developed at Bell Labs in the late 1960s as a powerful but flexible system above grunt-level assembly language, Unix became the system of choice for developers in the flowering of the microcomputer world, partly because much of it could be shared freely between programmers.
Sure, as long as you don't count the first several versions of UNIX. Or AT&Ts licensing. BSD UNIX? What is that?
Articles like this that play fast and loose with the facts are a dis-service to the public.
The phrase "party line" brings images of Brave New World.
And maybe that's what we are facing. There's so much to keep up with.
Sometimes it's nice to sit back and be content.
I wonder if MS is innovating in the consortium model, except that they think they are big enough to form a group all by themselves. Remember the X11 R6.4 scare? That was with a history of $0 information. Companies like MS don't have any significant open minded background to work from.
Subject: Slashdot
A while ago, when I was more organized I was thinking about writing in to Ask Slashdot about the 'community'. At the time I thought it was really remarkable that such an open forum managed to stay coherent. I pondered the possibility of taking this reality into meat space. Even a little bit. Now I find myself of the opinion that things are coming apart. In far too many topics trolls make up the majority of visual space. Moderation seems to have taken a turn for the worse, marking posts because they are early. What is 'under-rated'? I love the idea, but Im not sure we can handle it at this point.
And the blame isn't 100% on the outside users. Things like software release announcements are getting a bit out of hand too. Something like the linux 2.2 release I can see. 2.2.15, that's pushing it. Is this slashdot, or fresh meat? Repeats of topics are silly too. I would be all for doing a search over the site before posting something new. Maybe when something resurfaces, a link to the previous discussion could be provided with updates.
time to take a breath and let the smoke clear
couple things about this proposal:
1) heroes: Richard Stallman. Contributor: Richard Stallman
Sorry, just bugs me.
2) heroes: librarians. No, not as a general rule, sorry.
They're like cops. Some are good, some are bad. The job's
a public servant (for public libraries of course).
3) potential opponents: Microsoft. Hello? Kerberos extensions.
Could be predating the latest incident I suppose.
4) It says nice things. Like on a playground. Nothing new. Who is
the target here?
The Fishman case, IIRC.
Pretty much an issue of republication of freely distributed content. Again, IIRC.
The KKK had a somewhat similar run in, inserting fliers into a free hardcopy newspaper. I dont recall the results
Ahh, but you miss a critical value in the MS Windows registry.
If you corrupt the RPM database (*raises hand*), you don't have to reinstall the OS and applications!
It's ok ma'am, we're professionals
No changelog in the 2.2 directory.
No changelog in linux/ of the tarball
In 2.2.14, I find a total of 5.
In drivers/char, drivers/scsi, drivers/sound, fs, and fs/hfs.
And looking at the char and scsi ones, they're all pretty old stuff.
Is there a changelog somewhere?
A possible angle on this incident would be to take the moral high ground, as visibly as can be managed. Perhaps there is the slight possibility that closed source software developers who are a bit edgy about open source might be calmed a bit. While revenge is sweet for the short term, making open source philosophy appear a bit more friendly may see better returns over time
A secondary issue: Who does the selling?
A successful opensource project can potentially be as much the work of active users as the project originator. There's an issue of trust brought into this dilemma. How many people are prepared to deal with such a situation? It seems to me that there's been a bit of, to borrow from Alan Greenspan, "irrational exuberance" displayed in recent history.
Im thinking that on one level, something like the internet is incompatible with privacy in everyday meatspace. The very miracle of internet's existance, a common set of communication protocols, requires revealing information. That is if you want a response. Things like anonymous remailers allow a bit of hiding, but in the end you still have to trust somebody.
I agree, but I think that it should be carried a step further. Not only should we fight invasions of personal liberties, we should explain to other why it is important. I see examples on a regular basis of people being trained to accept the established authorities into one more aspect of life. The common reaction is that it's not a big deal. The inconvience of going against the flow isn't worth an intangible concept.
Among the distasteful activities is the defence of those who you have a disagreement with. This comes up with KKK demonstrations. The same with the confederate flag. Add in a little scare, such as shooting, a bombing, or a theft of something with emotional significance, and the average person is lining up to be monitored.
But there are boundaries. The tolerance of others.
For most people, there will always be someone more powerful. If you are sufficiently loud, they tend to notice you. Many mediums have a method of cancelation. Someone out there is willing to use that power. How many times have you witnessed, in a manner, a web site fold under pressure from some corporation?
So why isn't anyone kicking in the door? Maybe your positive, or rather useful traits currently outweigh the advantages in stamping you out.
The one thing I see standing to hinder information collection and use is sheer numbers. It's hard to get a large group to stand still and be counted. This works to the disadvantage of retailers. I think that the answer is not so much targeting tech-oriented users, but rather making a larger portion of the population believe that they are in the know.
Do geeks want freedom? Or do they want more toys to play with? It's frustrating to be denied, for finacial reasons no less than any other. Free information batters down one more 'no'.
The concept of IP is a rather intellectual concept in itself. To what extent can any person really create something new? It's very difficult to do anything without building on what others have done. In a way, invention is merely synthesis. To take it to an extreme, how much credit do you give to the builder of something really fascinating, if they used legos?
It's a blurry line. I don;t give credit to the plumbers or the utility company when I am inspired while in the shower. And yet, I realise that the code I write after would be much less without the work of the compiler writers, and the CPU designers, and too many others to comprehend.
The issue with fetchmail is a different issue from traditional encryption techniques. Usually when you encrypt something, you have 3 parts.
1) the message
2) the algorithim
3) a key
The third part is very important. With it, you can create variation, in a manner, of your algorithim. Use a big key, get lots of variations.
In order to avoid having the user type in one password to get another, something like fetchmail (or QNX's password storage, from what I gather), would have to eliminate the third part, leaving you with an invertible function (g of f(x) == x).
IIRC, ESR thought that doing such a thing was silly, and decided not to waste the effort on it.
It seems someone at QNX thought a bit more highly of it.
I think source code / source mechanism access being assumed is a rather new idea, coming out of academia and of course the open source movement.
In the past, many users of encryption technilogy sought to keep secret the mechanisms in use. Such as Enigma.
Bah. If it's an NT ATM, it's probably already logged into an account. At least the one I watched crash was
Yup, it's there in the some of the 2.3 series too.
The Intel PIIIs support updating their microcode via software. Scary!
Whaddya mean I havea Motorolla 6800 in my system?!?
Say it ain't so! On the issue of SMP support, having support on the processor could certainly be a help. However, lacking it (processor ID) does not bar the possibility. Otherwise, things like 32 processor Xeon systems wouldn't fly, as IIRC, the processors only have support for 4 IDs.
On the Athlon, I've read that they do indeed have 'support' in the manner mentioned above. references:AMD
That's funny, I misread 'planet detection' as 'planet destruction', and thought to myself "so NASA has a Death Star..."
Ahh. Police in California ask you to take a breath test any time they feel like it. Refuse, and you lose your license for a year. Technically, you have your choice of tests, between breath, blood and urine. In practice, they give a second test if the first doesn't come out positive. As the second takes too long to confirm (blood and urine tests get sent off to a lab, with results taking weeks at times), it tends to stop there.
I've seen situations where things are going perhaps a bit too slowly, so out comes the accusations of intoxication. At which point, they throw a variety of field sobriety tests at the person, lock them in the back of the squad car, and proceed to search the person's vehicle.
Im guessing you've never tried to port a large program. Just because there is a common language does not mean that porting is a non-issue. While it may be ideal that every program that is written in C sticks to ANSI functions and syntax, sometimes this isn't convenient/efficient/interesting. So you probe in system specifici functionality. For an example of this, there the dldump() function in Solaris. To go a step further, some systems support concepts that don't quite mesh with C. String handling in VMS. Or, you could come across difference of opinions with C compilers. I've written code that GCC would handle without so much as a single warning, that the MIPS Pro compiler (SGI) would refuse to compile. The existance of a program on two platforms does not mean that they came from the same code, or use the same general implementation.
IIRC, MS lost it's UNIX producing rights (not the TOG sort) when it sold Xenix to SCO. Oh yeah, I dont think that TOG cares what you call Unix, as long as you give proper note, payment, etc to UNIX(TM)(R)(etc)
I dont think that thinking about bypassing a test is the same as thinking about killing. If this were the case, then you open up an infinite number of possibilities for allowable pre-meditation. Does filling the tank before a night of drinking count? It certainly is an enabling act. How about sharpening a knife that is later used to stab a person?
I also have to disagree that being able to use a breathalyser proves that a person should know that they cant drive. It's pretty easy to recall from past events that blowing into a tube makes the car work. Past experience might not cover knowing when enough is enough. This is looking alot like an analisys of how children learn. "To make the cookies, turn on the stove. Mom didnt burn herself, so I dont know anything about that"