Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
Oh, OK. I'll just set my preferences to display comments at "1, except 2 for people with a +1 bonus."
Actually, that's probably how thresholds should work, even if it wouldn't explicitly say so (shouldn't be too hard to code either)./. gives +1 to people whose posts deserve a bit of pre-moderation based on their track record. If someone elects not to use it, then they have effectively modded themselves down (from their default).
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
...A lot less cheating (not that it would be impossible, but the equipment to do it is not widely available) and a lot more powergaming as the IQ bar for entering these games is lowered further.
Making a NEW game based on a console might not be a bad idea but introducing console users to an existing PC only MMORPG would be utter chaos.
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
...the web posting of the new book? It's been months since we were promised that JK would make right the arbitrary snarfage of/. comments by posting the book as a serial.
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Really, there is no 100% effective lock. Read the MIT Building Hacker's guide some time to get an idea of exactly how sad some lock mechanisms are.
This applies to computers and software too. No net connected machine is 100% secure. Even disconnected, placed in a steel room, buried in a mountain, it's still not 100% secure. When you bring people (admins and users) into the picture you really shoot your security to shit.
I'm gonna put a foot down here and give an absolute: I refuse to believe that anyone should be held liable for the laws of the universe. If it's impossible to make a 100% secure lock then you shouldn't be able to sue the lockmaker unless they purposefully introduced a flaw into the mechanism.
Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't publicly deride a lockmaker or software house for bad security.
(Begs the question: Has a software house ever been sued for a security flaw?)
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Systems cracking is NOT just vandalism. It's breaking and entering. The crackers don't just spray-paint their names on the pages, they have to subvert the security of the webserver itself to do so.
IANAL, but I've heard from residents of some states in the US that if you catch someone breaking into your home you are allowed to use deadly force to protect your property. In this case, if they get caught cracking your system, their life is pretty much over (from a professional point of view). Works for me.
If systems cracking remains a crime that can be gotten away with, then companys will be more likely to accidentally hire some of these people who will likely go on to use the company's systems for their illicit adventures.
Screw 'em. If I had my way, I'd be allowed to shoot anyone I caught breaking into my cable modem connected PC at home. The ones banging on my firewall at work would be another story altogether; I'd keep them alive in extreme pain for a long time.
(Sorry to sound so venemous, but I really really really hate krad fuckoffs.)
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Ok, aside from the fact that Special Interest Groups are slowly but surely crushing freedom in this country, we gotta remember the old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Yesterday we were talking about forming a union, an idea that was quickly dumped as impractical and unnecessary. Today we're talking about how geeks aren't participating in the political process and as a result we're getting our rights trampled on.
Let's go back to that union idea, shall we? If we had a union, we could lobby against crap we don't like. We could negotiate with our employers and tell them "Hey, you support this law, you don't get tech support for a week. Try doing business without your servers, chum." or even "Hey, you encrypt that format and try to make it another DeCSS fiasco, and we'll make you pay for it."
In short, a union would give the geeks a blunt instrument to bash the idiots of the world on the head with. It would help us on the job front AND on the political front. I say let's do it, and get our frickin' heads out of the sand! The government, big business, and what not do NOT operate on the same principles we do. Money counts more than technichal merit right now and we gotta turn that trend around! The ONLY way to do that is to play their game and beat 'em at it.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
--Threed
If I hear this one more time...
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
I'm gonna explode! The US has NEVER been a democracy. It's a REPUBLIC and damn proud of it.
This is not simple quibbling, it's a very important point. People throw the word "democracy" around without realizing exactly what it means...
In a democracy, the second the people realize that they don't have to vote for the good of the nation, its all downhill from there.
A republic has the same problem on a different level: Special Interest Groups. These fuckers have got to GO.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Comparing the skillful manipulation of peoples' opinions to the delicate manipulation of peoples' organs... Um, I sense a logical break here.
Anyone should be able to practice law. If a self-proclaimed lawyer turns out to be a hack, he won't get much business will he? Let the Bar stand as a sort of "certification", a'la MCSE... You don't need it to do the job, but you're more likely to get the job if you have it.
There used to be a legal precept that if the law was too complicated for the average joe to understand, then it is invalid. Think about it: If its impossible to determine just from reading the legal code whether or not something I want to do is a crime, then I shouldn't be helf liable. And "Average Joe" is a legally admissible concept (example: defamation - its only defamation if the average joe would have believed it, and so claiming that President Clinton likes to have sex with his cat before every press conference would be written up as hyperbole.)
Vote Libertarian... They're the only party that wants to make the law easier to understand, defend your freedom, and put Average Joes in office. (USians only, others please disregard)
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Whatever happened to the concept of "Agents", software that would comb the net for Things I Want at Cheap Prices? It was thought, not too long ago IIRC, that we'd be able to give a piece of software a shopping list and it'd negotiate on our behalf, request confirmation, and then handle the purchase for us. That'd put a stop to this crap right quick, and would cut down on the marketroid garbage too. Amazon would be forced to compete with a mom-n-pop web-based bookseller, because they might just be able to get my comic books 5 cents cheaper.
An added bonus, the mom-n-pops that could deliver 5 cents cheaper would benefit, as the barrier to entry would be lower (no need for a one-click patent and a huge web presence if your back end is going to negotiate directly with another piece of software.)
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Why'd I turn off the KatzFilter? Oh yeah, we were promised a/. printing of the new book. Did I miss that or something? Oh well. Just wanted to see if I was quoted in it.
Anyway, Jon, don't go reading too much into White Wolf's stuff. Rule #1: It's just a frickin' game. (You take it too seriously and you wind up like Dallas Egbert) Rule #2: You can (and many storytellers do) throw out any White Wolf material you don't like (I throw almost all of it out, and I don't let my players use any material I don't own).
The World of Darkness is a parallel to our world. It's recognisible enough to be realistic and fantastic enough to capture the imagination, sure, but it's just a backdrop for White Wolf's real product: The Storyteller System. Its only there so that neophyte Storytellers will have some stock material to base a chronicle on (and to inflate WW's profit margin).
Here's something for you to think about for a second... When WW announced the latest revision of the Vampire: The Masquerade rules, the teaser hinted that computers and the internet would play a larger part in the game. Many fans flamed that Vampire: The Masquerade was turning into Vampire: The Cyberpunking. No one wanted the game to be refocused, rather we wanted a few holes in the rules plugged up.
On the subject of Mage itself... A decent game, I guess, but Vampire really kicks ass. Personal preference? I don't know a single serious Mage player. Some of the Vampire fanatics own the Mage books, but only because they have the WW logo on 'em.
I personally take offense at the often used line that RPGs are an escape route for tortured geeks. Pththbt... These games started as tabletop war games for military buffs. Hardly geek-like, eh? To get one of these games together and to keep it running smoothly, a Storyteller needs to have 1 million hit points and infinite charisma. It takes a good network of friends to do it right. Lots of communication and endless phone tag. Hardly socially inept, eh?
The reason the kids in the DnD club were all beanie-heads is because these games take BRAINS to play. In a game where combat scenes can dilate game-time by a factor of 10 and require and ungodly number of die rolls, anyone who's not sharp as a tack with numbers, probability, and record keeping is going to go back to their Nintendo and play Ghosts-n-Goblins.
The world is poorer for loss of belief in Magic? HUH?
Who says the world has lost its faith? There's plenty of New Age shops and even mainstream bookstores have large quantities of texts on performing rituals and divination. The US Army was forced to allow Wiccans to practice at nearby campgrounds. The Catholic Church's leadership issues press releases that are picked up by the major news outlets. Wandering proselytisors (sp?) still ring my bell every once in a while.
Even if the world had lost its faith, many would consider that a Good Thing(tm). How many lives have been lost over religious matters? Even if you count just those that had something to do with someone's idea of "Magic", there's been plenty of documented witch-burnings.
And now, the haves vs. the have-nots... The great unwashed masses of the computer illiterate... Most of them consider their ignorance to be bliss. Case in point: My older brother gave up on computers at about the time I picked them up. Now he's a head taller than I am, gets all the girls, has a TAN, and loves life. Try explaining the DeCSS controversy to HIM! Does he like movies? Oh yeah. He digged The Matrix. To him, movies keep getting better. So what's the big deal? Nevermind.
Knowledge isn't shrinking. It doesn't even SEEM to be shrinking. Breakthroughs are coming down the pike every day. No one person can know it all so it might seem bewildering, but each person's store of individual knowledge can only grow.
I find the closing paragraph pretty ludicrous. No one has the "great revelation" experience on the net anymore. It's become another party-line. A global fun-zone. A really nifty way to slack off at work. The "pass this on" emails that go around give this one dead away... Americans are consumers, and we consume the net the same way we consume the telephone. Sometimes people look up at the clock and realize they've been online longer than they planned, but that's about the only great awakening that's going on. Business as usual, the net's a product now.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
I'd like to know why my post was modded "informative"... It was a _question_. A question isn't informative. Interesting, maybe, but not informative.
(And I guess my question's been answered... Bye bye Stronghold. It was fun while it lasted.)
Anyways...
RH bought Stronghold? I missed that one. I can't think what their motivation might be, other than to have yet another OSS project under their umbrella (more stuff to provide $upport for.) Perfectly in line with their business model.
And of course C2Net extended deadlines. With the impending loss of value in their RSA license, they gotta keep the price down or risk losing business to Apache/OpenSSL. My company paid for Stronghold because of the legalities. We never needed support at all. I'm guessing there's a whole lot of sites in the same boat.
I was under the impression that you could still get IPs for virtual hosting, but you have to justify them. We had to justify our subnet to our uplink. This consisted of a phone call, "looks like we need 6 IPs to start with; dns, mail, firewall, gateway, and 2 web servers." It was no problem at all.
Then again, we only have one secure server here.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
I never was too clear on the RSA licensing thing. My company paid for Stronghold for the sole purpose of avoiding such difficulties. Does this mean that I can scrap that and use Apache/OpenSSL for my B2B site? It looks to me like I can, but I'd like to keep the company 100% in the clear.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Everyone's patting Troll Tech on the back for GPLing QT instead of LGPLing it. It was indeed a brilliant move that exposes QT to the hordes of KDE developers while protecting their revenue by charging for commercial development.
Now, what happens to the commercial developers who use QT if Troll Tech goes under? They get to keep the last version of QT that they purchased, and that's it. They lose the ability to use the latest and greatest free (speech) QT for their closed apps.
The KDE Free QT Foundation will still have the right to release QT under the BSD License (I hope without the advertisement clause). I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the licensing issues there: GPL and BSD versions of the same code... What happens there? Anyone?
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
The quality of "slickness", call it ease-of-use, integration, homogenization, themability, or whatever, used to be the responsibility of the distro.
RedHat started whomping on other distros because of the value-add in the form of slickness. Mandrake started trumping RedHat when they went beyond just repackaging RedHat's stuff and did even more value adding, in the form of added slickness (Drak tools). Slickness now touches every aspect of the OS; installation, configuration, and the general look and feel.
Now, the slickness of Helix Gnome and KDE are going to be available to each distro. The problem with this is, no one will want to come up with their own slickness. We're losing choices and getting slickness that may not be appropriate shoved down our throats by the competition of distros! Whereas before, the choice was "RPM, DEB, or TAR.GZ", now it's "Who's slickness are we going to use?" Lord knows, they gotta have some slickness, 'cause every other distro has it. And they soon won't be able to give the user a choice because each slickness package has its own tools, its own way of doing things with the rest of the system, and they soon won't cooperate well.
Gnome & KDE used to be simple (compared to current) ways to get apps to cooperate (cut-n-paste, drag-n-drop, file management). Now they're controlling the whole system, to the point where getting anything done from the command line is harder because the tools do things in toolish ways (pun intended!). The configuration files are getting less text-editable. More and more apps depend on the presence of a slickness package.
And you know what, none of it makes my life any easier. I just have to learn new ways to perform the same tasks because now they're all graphical and the configuration files are getting more machine-edit-only as time goes on.
I may not know what to do about it, but I KNOW something's got to be done. Microsoftism is creeping in, along with corporate bucks and media hype. It's not quite time for a down-with-slickness campaign, but it's time to start thinking about where all this slickness is leading us.
(This post probably belongs under the Helix story more than it belongs under the KDE story, but it applys to both. Does/. need crossposting now? Anyways, don't mod me down for flamebait. Helix is walking a bad path but KDE's got Mandrake pumping new tools into it on every release. Just as guilty.)
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Ok, UO sucked. EverQuest has issues. The ONE person I know who plays Asheron's Call is about to give up. What's a gamer to do?
Join WorldForge! www.worldforge.org
With an Open Source player in the MMORPG niche there will be some real competition in the area of game-play. Don't like the rules? Change 'em! Want your own world? Download a server. Computer's too slow to handle the 3D client? It works with a 2D client as well as a text client.
The real Threed's/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Some of that crap up there (nuts, bolts, misc junk) is moving far too fast to be recaptured.
Anyway, I don't get this article. I mean, I watched a *TV show* about space debris tracking. Either/. missed it the first time around, or there's been new developments that haven't been modded up yet.
The Navy has a gun that can use relatively small bullets to destroy large targets. The giant "laser" could do the same thing if it can be aimed fast enough. Shoot it 'till it breaks up, then shoot the pieces until they vaporize.
All the complaints about Mozilla - Netscape/AOL tie-ins, bloat, feature creep, unnecessary duplication of extant functionality, license incompatibility (galleon) - are about to be cured.
It'll be Free. It'll be linkable and reusable. All the extra crap can be stripped out. It'll be a wonderful day.
But the next day might be bleak indeed, and this is where your acid test might fail.
The MPL fork will remain the most cohesive, especially if the GPL releases lag behind the MPL. No one will maintain it as a full fledged project on its own (like the Linux Kernel is). It'll be more like GhostScript - the latest and greatest will cost you (cash), the next best is free (beer) - only in Mozilla's case it's costing freedom.
In order to make it a true acid test (and really, in order to save Mozilla from complete crapitude, my opinion), it has to completely break away from Netscape and then pick up a new, powerful maintainer (a Benevolent Dictator).
In any case, when it comes time to submit a patch, submit it under the GPL, even if that means it won't make it into the Netscape-maintained codebase.
In other words... We oughta take the crown jewels and run like hell. Maybe leave behind a thank you card.
I thought it was just me. I can't say why, but Debian frightens me. Not the software, the whole concept. There's something about it that just rubs me the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
...I tell them to hold out their hand!
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
/. gives +1 to people whose posts deserve a bit of pre-moderation based on their track record. If someone elects not to use it, then they have effectively modded themselves down (from their default).
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Oh, OK. I'll just set my preferences to display comments at "1, except 2 for people with a +1 bonus."
Actually, that's probably how thresholds should work, even if it wouldn't explicitly say so (shouldn't be too hard to code either).
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's
--Threed
...A lot less cheating (not that it would be impossible, but the equipment to do it is not widely available) and a lot more powergaming as the IQ bar for entering these games is lowered further.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Making a NEW game based on a console might not be a bad idea but introducing console users to an existing PC only MMORPG would be utter chaos.
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's
--Threed
...the web posting of the new book? It's been months since we were promised that JK would make right the arbitrary snarfage of /. comments by posting the book as a serial.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Moderators: I have a +1 and I didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Really, there is no 100% effective lock. Read the MIT Building Hacker's guide some time to get an idea of exactly how sad some lock mechanisms are.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
This applies to computers and software too. No net connected machine is 100% secure. Even disconnected, placed in a steel room, buried in a mountain, it's still not 100% secure. When you bring people (admins and users) into the picture you really shoot your security to shit.
I'm gonna put a foot down here and give an absolute: I refuse to believe that anyone should be held liable for the laws of the universe. If it's impossible to make a 100% secure lock then you shouldn't be able to sue the lockmaker unless they purposefully introduced a flaw into the mechanism.
Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't publicly deride a lockmaker or software house for bad security.
(Begs the question: Has a software house ever been sued for a security flaw?)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Systems cracking is NOT just vandalism. It's breaking and entering. The crackers don't just spray-paint their names on the pages, they have to subvert the security of the webserver itself to do so.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
IANAL, but I've heard from residents of some states in the US that if you catch someone breaking into your home you are allowed to use deadly force to protect your property. In this case, if they get caught cracking your system, their life is pretty much over (from a professional point of view). Works for me.
If systems cracking remains a crime that can be gotten away with, then companys will be more likely to accidentally hire some of these people who will likely go on to use the company's systems for their illicit adventures.
Screw 'em. If I had my way, I'd be allowed to shoot anyone I caught breaking into my cable modem connected PC at home. The ones banging on my firewall at work would be another story altogether; I'd keep them alive in extreme pain for a long time.
(Sorry to sound so venemous, but I really really really hate krad fuckoffs.)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Back in the day, stealing someone's horse was worse than murder. They'd string you up without a trial and the sheriff would look the other way.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
I bet that back in the day, the average person felt that Justice was on his side. Nowadays, Justice is half crap-shoot / half payola.
The real Threed's
--Threed
More bandwidth == more users == more demand for people like me to keep the servers from falling to their knees.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Wire 'em up first and let the routers sort 'em out.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Ok, aside from the fact that Special Interest Groups are slowly but surely crushing freedom in this country, we gotta remember the old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Yesterday we were talking about forming a union, an idea that was quickly dumped as impractical and unnecessary. Today we're talking about how geeks aren't participating in the political process and as a result we're getting our rights trampled on.
Let's go back to that union idea, shall we? If we had a union, we could lobby against crap we don't like. We could negotiate with our employers and tell them "Hey, you support this law, you don't get tech support for a week. Try doing business without your servers, chum." or even "Hey, you encrypt that format and try to make it another DeCSS fiasco, and we'll make you pay for it."
In short, a union would give the geeks a blunt instrument to bash the idiots of the world on the head with. It would help us on the job front AND on the political front. I say let's do it, and get our frickin' heads out of the sand! The government, big business, and what not do NOT operate on the same principles we do. Money counts more than technichal merit right now and we gotta turn that trend around! The ONLY way to do that is to play their game and beat 'em at it.
The real Threed's
--Threed
I'm gonna explode! The US has NEVER been a democracy. It's a REPUBLIC and damn proud of it.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
This is not simple quibbling, it's a very important point. People throw the word "democracy" around without realizing exactly what it means...
In a democracy, the second the people realize that they don't have to vote for the good of the nation, its all downhill from there.
A republic has the same problem on a different level: Special Interest Groups. These fuckers have got to GO.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Comparing the skillful manipulation of peoples' opinions to the delicate manipulation of peoples' organs... Um, I sense a logical break here.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Anyone should be able to practice law. If a self-proclaimed lawyer turns out to be a hack, he won't get much business will he? Let the Bar stand as a sort of "certification", a'la MCSE... You don't need it to do the job, but you're more likely to get the job if you have it.
There used to be a legal precept that if the law was too complicated for the average joe to understand, then it is invalid. Think about it: If its impossible to determine just from reading the legal code whether or not something I want to do is a crime, then I shouldn't be helf liable. And "Average Joe" is a legally admissible concept (example: defamation - its only defamation if the average joe would have believed it, and so claiming that President Clinton likes to have sex with his cat before every press conference would be written up as hyperbole.)
Vote Libertarian... They're the only party that wants to make the law easier to understand, defend your freedom, and put Average Joes in office. (USians only, others please disregard)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Whatever happened to the concept of "Agents", software that would comb the net for Things I Want at Cheap Prices? It was thought, not too long ago IIRC, that we'd be able to give a piece of software a shopping list and it'd negotiate on our behalf, request confirmation, and then handle the purchase for us. That'd put a stop to this crap right quick, and would cut down on the marketroid garbage too. Amazon would be forced to compete with a mom-n-pop web-based bookseller, because they might just be able to get my comic books 5 cents cheaper.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
An added bonus, the mom-n-pops that could deliver 5 cents cheaper would benefit, as the barrier to entry would be lower (no need for a one-click patent and a huge web presence if your back end is going to negotiate directly with another piece of software.)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Why'd I turn off the KatzFilter? Oh yeah, we were promised a /. printing of the new book. Did I miss that or something? Oh well. Just wanted to see if I was quoted in it.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Anyway, Jon, don't go reading too much into White Wolf's stuff. Rule #1: It's just a frickin' game. (You take it too seriously and you wind up like Dallas Egbert) Rule #2: You can (and many storytellers do) throw out any White Wolf material you don't like (I throw almost all of it out, and I don't let my players use any material I don't own).
The World of Darkness is a parallel to our world. It's recognisible enough to be realistic and fantastic enough to capture the imagination, sure, but it's just a backdrop for White Wolf's real product: The Storyteller System. Its only there so that neophyte Storytellers will have some stock material to base a chronicle on (and to inflate WW's profit margin).
Here's something for you to think about for a second... When WW announced the latest revision of the Vampire: The Masquerade rules, the teaser hinted that computers and the internet would play a larger part in the game. Many fans flamed that Vampire: The Masquerade was turning into Vampire: The Cyberpunking. No one wanted the game to be refocused, rather we wanted a few holes in the rules plugged up.
On the subject of Mage itself... A decent game, I guess, but Vampire really kicks ass. Personal preference? I don't know a single serious Mage player. Some of the Vampire fanatics own the Mage books, but only because they have the WW logo on 'em.
I personally take offense at the often used line that RPGs are an escape route for tortured geeks. Pththbt... These games started as tabletop war games for military buffs. Hardly geek-like, eh? To get one of these games together and to keep it running smoothly, a Storyteller needs to have 1 million hit points and infinite charisma. It takes a good network of friends to do it right. Lots of communication and endless phone tag. Hardly socially inept, eh?
The reason the kids in the DnD club were all beanie-heads is because these games take BRAINS to play. In a game where combat scenes can dilate game-time by a factor of 10 and require and ungodly number of die rolls, anyone who's not sharp as a tack with numbers, probability, and record keeping is going to go back to their Nintendo and play Ghosts-n-Goblins.
The world is poorer for loss of belief in Magic? HUH?
Who says the world has lost its faith? There's plenty of New Age shops and even mainstream bookstores have large quantities of texts on performing rituals and divination. The US Army was forced to allow Wiccans to practice at nearby campgrounds. The Catholic Church's leadership issues press releases that are picked up by the major news outlets. Wandering proselytisors (sp?) still ring my bell every once in a while.
Even if the world had lost its faith, many would consider that a Good Thing(tm). How many lives have been lost over religious matters? Even if you count just those that had something to do with someone's idea of "Magic", there's been plenty of documented witch-burnings.
And now, the haves vs. the have-nots... The great unwashed masses of the computer illiterate... Most of them consider their ignorance to be bliss. Case in point: My older brother gave up on computers at about the time I picked them up. Now he's a head taller than I am, gets all the girls, has a TAN, and loves life. Try explaining the DeCSS controversy to HIM! Does he like movies? Oh yeah. He digged The Matrix. To him, movies keep getting better. So what's the big deal? Nevermind.
Knowledge isn't shrinking. It doesn't even SEEM to be shrinking. Breakthroughs are coming down the pike every day. No one person can know it all so it might seem bewildering, but each person's store of individual knowledge can only grow.
I find the closing paragraph pretty ludicrous. No one has the "great revelation" experience on the net anymore. It's become another party-line. A global fun-zone. A really nifty way to slack off at work. The "pass this on" emails that go around give this one dead away... Americans are consumers, and we consume the net the same way we consume the telephone. Sometimes people look up at the clock and realize they've been online longer than they planned, but that's about the only great awakening that's going on. Business as usual, the net's a product now.
The real Threed's
--Threed
I'd like to know why my post was modded "informative"... It was a _question_. A question isn't informative. Interesting, maybe, but not informative.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
(And I guess my question's been answered... Bye bye Stronghold. It was fun while it lasted.)
Anyways...
RH bought Stronghold? I missed that one. I can't think what their motivation might be, other than to have yet another OSS project under their umbrella (more stuff to provide $upport for.) Perfectly in line with their business model.
And of course C2Net extended deadlines. With the impending loss of value in their RSA license, they gotta keep the price down or risk losing business to Apache/OpenSSL. My company paid for Stronghold because of the legalities. We never needed support at all. I'm guessing there's a whole lot of sites in the same boat.
I was under the impression that you could still get IPs for virtual hosting, but you have to justify them. We had to justify our subnet to our uplink. This consisted of a phone call, "looks like we need 6 IPs to start with; dns, mail, firewall, gateway, and 2 web servers." It was no problem at all.
Then again, we only have one secure server here.
The real Threed's
--Threed
I never was too clear on the RSA licensing thing. My company paid for Stronghold for the sole purpose of avoiding such difficulties. Does this mean that I can scrap that and use Apache/OpenSSL for my B2B site? It looks to me like I can, but I'd like to keep the company 100% in the clear.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Everyone's patting Troll Tech on the back for GPLing QT instead of LGPLing it. It was indeed a brilliant move that exposes QT to the hordes of KDE developers while protecting their revenue by charging for commercial development.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Now, what happens to the commercial developers who use QT if Troll Tech goes under? They get to keep the last version of QT that they purchased, and that's it. They lose the ability to use the latest and greatest free (speech) QT for their closed apps.
The KDE Free QT Foundation will still have the right to release QT under the BSD License (I hope without the advertisement clause). I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the licensing issues there: GPL and BSD versions of the same code... What happens there? Anyone?
The real Threed's
--Threed
The quality of "slickness", call it ease-of-use, integration, homogenization, themability, or whatever, used to be the responsibility of the distro.
/. need crossposting now? Anyways, don't mod me down for flamebait. Helix is walking a bad path but KDE's got Mandrake pumping new tools into it on every release. Just as guilty.)
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
RedHat started whomping on other distros because of the value-add in the form of slickness. Mandrake started trumping RedHat when they went beyond just repackaging RedHat's stuff and did even more value adding, in the form of added slickness (Drak tools). Slickness now touches every aspect of the OS; installation, configuration, and the general look and feel.
Now, the slickness of Helix Gnome and KDE are going to be available to each distro. The problem with this is, no one will want to come up with their own slickness. We're losing choices and getting slickness that may not be appropriate shoved down our throats by the competition of distros! Whereas before, the choice was "RPM, DEB, or TAR.GZ", now it's "Who's slickness are we going to use?" Lord knows, they gotta have some slickness, 'cause every other distro has it. And they soon won't be able to give the user a choice because each slickness package has its own tools, its own way of doing things with the rest of the system, and they soon won't cooperate well.
Gnome & KDE used to be simple (compared to current) ways to get apps to cooperate (cut-n-paste, drag-n-drop, file management). Now they're controlling the whole system, to the point where getting anything done from the command line is harder because the tools do things in toolish ways (pun intended!). The configuration files are getting less text-editable. More and more apps depend on the presence of a slickness package.
And you know what, none of it makes my life any easier. I just have to learn new ways to perform the same tasks because now they're all graphical and the configuration files are getting more machine-edit-only as time goes on.
I may not know what to do about it, but I KNOW something's got to be done. Microsoftism is creeping in, along with corporate bucks and media hype. It's not quite time for a down-with-slickness campaign, but it's time to start thinking about where all this slickness is leading us.
(This post probably belongs under the Helix story more than it belongs under the KDE story, but it applys to both. Does
The real Threed's
--Threed
Ok, UO sucked. EverQuest has issues. The ONE person I know who plays Asheron's Call is about to give up. What's a gamer to do?
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Join WorldForge! www.worldforge.org
With an Open Source player in the MMORPG niche there will be some real competition in the area of game-play. Don't like the rules? Change 'em! Want your own world? Download a server. Computer's too slow to handle the 3D client? It works with a 2D client as well as a text client.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Especially using words like "gripping" to describe the Nvida experience. Cut-n-paste journalism... Press release == story.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
On technical merits, I guess Nvida still wins it. The benchmarks (yeah, yeah) I've seen show Nvida thoroughly stomping 3dfx.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Some of that crap up there (nuts, bolts, misc junk) is moving far too fast to be recaptured.
/. missed it the first time around, or there's been new developments that haven't been modded up yet.
Anyway, I don't get this article. I mean, I watched a *TV show* about space debris tracking. Either
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
The Navy has a gun that can use relatively small bullets to destroy large targets. The giant "laser" could do the same thing if it can be aimed fast enough. Shoot it 'till it breaks up, then shoot the pieces until they vaporize.
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
They still get their NPL'd browser that they'll turn into a commercial product (and likely a new AOL frontend).
Open source HAS helped Mozilla. Netscape oversight hasn't.
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
All the complaints about Mozilla - Netscape/AOL tie-ins, bloat, feature creep, unnecessary duplication of extant functionality, license incompatibility (galleon) - are about to be cured.
It'll be Free. It'll be linkable and reusable. All the extra crap can be stripped out. It'll be a wonderful day.
But the next day might be bleak indeed, and this is where your acid test might fail.
The MPL fork will remain the most cohesive, especially if the GPL releases lag behind the MPL. No one will maintain it as a full fledged project on its own (like the Linux Kernel is). It'll be more like GhostScript - the latest and greatest will cost you (cash), the next best is free (beer) - only in Mozilla's case it's costing freedom.
In order to make it a true acid test (and really, in order to save Mozilla from complete crapitude, my opinion), it has to completely break away from Netscape and then pick up a new, powerful maintainer (a Benevolent Dictator).
In any case, when it comes time to submit a patch, submit it under the GPL, even if that means it won't make it into the Netscape-maintained codebase.
In other words... We oughta take the crown jewels and run like hell. Maybe leave behind a thank you card.
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
6. Debian GNU Linux gives me the willies
I thought it was just me. I can't say why, but Debian frightens me. Not the software, the whole concept. There's something about it that just rubs me the wrong way.
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
Because you only paid $50?
(Kidding.)
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!