Be very very careful. (Score:5, Insightful) ...If there's any similarity between Mono or DotGNU and the MS offering, MS can try to say that their code has been stolen....
ah, the old cut-off-the-oxygen (Score:4, Insightful) ...hobbyists something they can dink around with and they won't be worried about 'software freedom'; they want neat toys, not free software...
and my personal favorite:
If you code FS, don't _ever_ look at the source (Score:4, Interesting) ...From now on, FS developers will have to make sure that anyone on their project has _not_ agreed to the MS shared source license...
could be that whoever produced the patch (Mandrake in this case) got tired of having to submit it over and over, only to have it ignored bye (for example) Linus. i'm not complaining here, but i think at least part of the solution to this "problem" relates to how the patches are handled by the maintainers.
of this guy could probably be considered quite suspect by a large portion of the Slashdot community. have a look at this link listed as the second link in his "links" section.
In the stone age of firewalling, a firewall was a fairly complicated device that was less-than-trivial to factor into your network. It needed an IP address on it's outside, and another on the inside. This immediately created subnetting problems, forcing wasted IP allocation and overall disquietude amongst the cognoscenti. It also meant that your firewall was very visible to the world, and its function was rather obvious and easy to deduce. There had to be a better way. And now there is...
Dream with me for a moment: A black box, shimmering in the soft LED-green glow of the network cabinet. You take the network cable from your router, which previously went into a switch, and stick it in one of the snappy plugs in the back of the box. There's one more plug on the black box, so you grab another cable and hook the box up to the switch. You step back, and suddenly: everything looks the same. You go to all your computers. As far as you can tell from inside and outside the network, the box doesn't exist. It does nothing. A few minutes later, you have a monitor and keyboard hooked up to the back of the box. You quickly and easily begin to tweak a file that gives you fine grained control over access to your network. You shut off all access to your mailserver from the outside world except on port 25.
World-first Living Robots show set to open at Magna in March 2002
ARTIFICIAL intelligence machines, cyborgs, androids or replicants, call them what you will. But free-thinking, independently acting machines have captured the imagination of authors, film-makers, artists, the military and governments for a long time.
From 27 March 2002, a colony of Living Robots, divided into 15 predators and 6 prey, will be will be on show at the Magna Science Adventure Centre, Rotherham's £46m Millennium Commission Lottery funded attraction.
'Living Robots' is a world-first experiment into artificial evolution - a culmination of eighteen months of research by world expert and Robot Wars judge, Professor Noel Sharkey and his dedicated team at the Creative Robotics Unit at Magna (CRUM)
The Living Robots have one goal, to obtain enough energy to survive and breed. The prey find their food from light sensors within the arena, while the predators feed off prey by stalking and chasing them before sucking away their power.
This groundbreaking experiment is being transformed into a spectacular public show at Magna. The amazing exhibition will take place in a purpose built arena, designed to hold 500 people at any one time.
In place of lectures and diagrams, the groundbreaking technology used in the robots will be demonstrated to Magna visitors in spectacular 30 minute live action show - complete with atmospheric lights, smoke and music. Guests will witness the robots in their natural environment, fighting for survival, learning and evolving as time goes on.
Each show will begin in darkness. Dramatic music will flood into the arena as guests prepare themselves for the spectacular light, sound and science show. Firstly, a 'prey' robot will be introduced - a good guy.
These smaller robots are powered by light and will automatically search the arena for special light spots to refuel. It is not remote controlled, but is full of computer chips controlled by an 'artificial neuron network' - a brain - and when it moves, it is because his brain tells it to.
Secondly another prey robot is introduced and the narrator will demonstrate how the prey can recognise friend or foe. This is done by an infra-red 'sniffing'. All prey send out the same infra-red light, different to the predators, and the audience will see that the prey robots have no instinct to run from each other but are happy to graze side-by-side under the light sources.
The one prey is then sent back to its pen. As the light dims a predator will enter stage. This is higher up the food chain than the prey, and survives by feeding from their power - the bad guy. The audience will be given a demonstration as to how the predators use its long tusks to entrap the prey and the sucking the power from the prey's battery. This is instinct - not remote control.
When the demonstrations are over, the show begins. All the predators and prey are released and from this point on, there is no control. Will they fight back, will they run and hide? No-one knows, with each day, the robots change and evolve, and their actions will alter.
Audience participation is encouraged, the audience is asked to each pick a favourite, a pet to cheer for throughout the show, while the narrators are on hand to answer any questions.
The show will run throughout the day, times may vary. The show is included in the Magna ticket.
An untraceable, universally verifiable voting scheme
Recent electronic voting schemes have shown the ability to protect the privacy of voters and prevent the possibility of a voter from being coerced to reveal his vote. These schemes protect the voter's identity from the vote, but do not do so unconditionally. In this paper we apply a technique called blinded signatures to a voter's ballot so that it is impossible for anyone to trace the ballot back to the voter. We achieve the desired properties of privacy, universal verifiability, convenience and untraceability at the expense of receipt-freeness.
from http://www.eff.org/homes/fred_von_lohmann.html
Fred von Lohmannis a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property law. Before joining EFF, Fred was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. His research focused on the impact of peer-to-peer technologies on the future of copyright. Prior to his research fellowship, Fred was an associate with the international law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, concentrating on transactions and counseling involving the Internet and intellectual property. He comments frequently on copyright law and the Internet, including issues related to online music distribution and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and has advised a variety of Internet clients, including Yahoo, Verio, Myplay, and NBCi. Fred has an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl was the subjects of a great april fools joke almost
two years ago. in a story in the norwegian media (like at http://www.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd20000401010000 dsk8022888533
, don't bother clicking if you don't read any scandinavian languages) it was reported that the norwegian suprem court had finaly decided that Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl should receive compansation for ther work in inventing OOP. The compancation was to be in the amount of NOK1.00 (about us$0.10) per 1000 objects instanciated runtime. for object utilizing inheritance, the compansation should be increased by 12.5% per generation.
fantastic joke. managers in panicing, techies laughing.
One issue that is not mentioned in the release highlights is the marked improvement that is now available for SMP boxes. In some cases throughput has been increased by more than a factor of 2.
care to share some references to where we can read more about this? i just read the/pub/README.v72 document, and it had nothing on SMP.
VACUUM: Vacuuming no longer locks tables, thus allowing normal user access during the vacuum. A new "VACUUM FULL" command does old-style vacuum by locking the table and shrinking the on-disk copy of the table.
Transactions: There is no longer a problem with installations that exceed four billion transactions.
OID's: OID's are now optional. Users can now create tables without OID's for cases where OID usage is excessive.
Optimizer: The system now computes histogram column statistics during "ANALYZE", allowing much better optimizer choices.
Security: A new MD5 encryption option allows more secure storage and transfer of passwords. A new Unix-domain socket authentication option is available on Linux and BSD systems.
Statistics: Administrators can use the new table access statistics module to get fine-grained information about table and index usage.
Internationalization: Program and library messages can now be displayed in several languages.
.. with many many more bug fixes, enhancements and performance related changes...
if you have better things to do then to read 7 long pages of review...
We have presented a lot of information about a relatively simple device, and as there are not really any mobile devices on the market, we have largely been comparing the AquaPad against computing solutions consumers are likely to be using such as notebooks and desktops. In that regard, the Midori Linux based AquaPad has its limitations, but they are not unworkable. As a mobile platform to browse the web the AquaPad functions well - most major websites that deliver content, or news, are built using the most widely acceptable programing. With the exception of Hotmail, we had no difficulties exploring CNN, or TransmetaZone for example.
Multimedia or artistic websites that make use of Java or Shockwave present a hurdle for the AquaPad, so that is something to be aware of. However, support for RealAudio applications like streaming audio or video, and Flash5 is superb, so I guess it's a bit of a trade off.
With its 500MHz Crusoe processor, the AquaPad seemed well equipped to handle the variety of tasks we threw at it, and users who have never used Linux before will be comforted by the Windows-like user interface. The screen size is good for most of the websites on the web at the moment, but as webpages move away from the 800x600 pixel screen support to the larger and more common 1024x768 resolutions, the AquaPad may find itself outsized. For the moment, this is not a problem however.
Probably the neatest thing about the AquaPad was its ability to remotely update the OS over the internet. Battery life is good at just over 3 hours for average web surfing, but placing the DC power port (along with the USB and headphone jacks) behind the small door was awkward. I personally would have preferred to see these ports in a recessed area or along one edge protected by rubberized covers than the fold-down hard plastic port cover used.
The unit is comfortable to hold, and the magnesium alloy casing offers a tough alternative to what would otherwise be plastic. I especially like the little spot to hold the stylus, and found the on screen keyboard acceptable in terms of speed for entering in URL addresses.
Memory is one area I think FIC could improve upon. Including a Compact Flash card with the AquaPad would be one step in the right direction, but perhaps switching out the OS's CF card for an IBM microdrive would be even better, even with Linux. FIC tell us that the versions with Windows 98/ME/2000 make us of an internal microdrive however.
While we used the AquaPad extensively for web surfing and streaming audio playback during our evaluation, the problems gaining access into Hotmail limited its use to us a mobile platform for email. An integrated email client would be an interesting addition for the device to support, especially if the memory card was included.
There really is no one line summary that we can make about the AquaPad because its uses are so varied and depend on what each individual user requires. In terms of surfing, 80% of websites we tested it on had no problems and the pages were displayed correctly. Audio quality through the speaker was so so, but via the headphones excellent. The LCD panel was easy to read and bright enough for an office environment, and the touch screen is quite user friendly once you get accustomed to it. Whether or not the AquaPad is right for you, and your intended applications is up to you, but FIC definitely have something interesting here with this little blue magnesium device, and it is sure to turn heads!
Software has no intrinsic value. The value it has is that which is perceived by the user. Is a copy of Windows XP worth a family of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Is a copy of Microsoft Office worth two families of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Proprietary software is about revenue generation, not capability. Furthermore, there is nothing which says free software cannot co-exist with proprietary. If a particular capability requires proprietary, by all means, get a copy. But, does every capability require proprietary software? Certainly not.
The will and determination of the South African people has survived much greater hardship than software bugs with no answers, or support. The question to ask yourself here is: Will the South African Government be willing to pay $120USD per incident for software bugs that will likely still have no answer? In my experience, if there is a solution it is, "upgrade to the latest version for another $199USD."
The greater good is that which serves the most people. If you can make a case for proprietary that serves more people, then that's what you should do. However, I do not think that is possible, given the freedom (from corporate America) inherent in free and open source software.
you just know that every Tom, Dick and AC are going to try this service. this being just reopened I wouldn't think BBC have the required iron in place to handle the slashdot effect (very few have). at the end of the day, BBC will think this is a bad idea as it just keep crashing their servers. just my.02 euro.
My translation of the Dagbladet (norwegian newspaper) article. Spelling and gramatical errors are mine, factual errors are those of Dagbladet and the norwegian Police.
The 18 year only Jon Lech Johansen has been indicted for breaking the
"computer trespasing" paragraph of the norwegian criminal code.
Thursday January 10, 2002 14:02, updated 14:53.
This is confirmed to NTB by attorney Inger Marie Sunde. Johansen has since
January 2000 been charged by the norwegian financial crimes unit (Økokrim)
after being reported by the american movie- and entertainment organization
Movie Picture Association (MPA).
The background is that Johansen in 1999 participated in creating a program,
DeCSS, that make it possible to play back DVD movie under the Linux
operating system, and made it available on the internet. The program can
also be used to decrypt the content of DVD-disks and makes it possible to
copy the movie.
Johansen is indicted for participating in breaking the protection system
Content Scrambling System (CSS), that protects the content of DVD-disks
from copying.
Johansen is indicted based on the criminal code paragraph 145, parts
two and tree Sunde informs the NTB.
From the inditement:
"- For by breaking a protection scheme, of by similar activities unjustly
having gained access to data stored of transmitted by electronic or other
technical means and by having caused damage by gaining or using such
unjustly obtained knowledge."
The charged offense carries a maximum sentence of 6 months in prison.
compress all possible sequensec of 1000 bytes down to 10 bytes. if none of the "compressed" sequences are the same, the method works, if not these guys are just blowing smoke.
Slashdot Mirror
and my personal favorite:
let the flamefest and downmodding begin!
could be that whoever produced the patch (Mandrake in this case) got tired of having to submit it over and over, only to have it ignored bye (for example) Linus. i'm not complaining here, but i think at least part of the solution to this "problem" relates to how the patches are handled by the maintainers.
something like a quarter of a milion people read slashdot (or so i'm told). my suggestion for a solution is simple:
if you don't agree with the politics of this desicion, don't buy the game. tell your friends not to buy yhe game.
i'll bet they are going to lose a lot more money from that then they would ever have done due to piracy.
try protecting your intellectual property from that!
and rocking...
still rocking...
of this guy could probably be considered quite suspect by a large portion of the Slashdot community. have a look at this link listed as the second link in his "links" section.
OpenBSD may or may not be a vault, but if you'r running a NFS server on it it'd be the equivalent of forgetting to lock the vault-door.
NFS is to security what Microsoft is to competition.
been using it for a week now, and it rocks!
Kathleen
sorry commander, the public wanted to know...
congrats!!!
i blame konqoror :-( this is posted in Mozilla 0.9.8, sweet :-)
In the stone age of firewalling, a firewall was a fairly complicated device that was less-than-trivial to factor into your network. It needed an IP address on it's outside, and another on the inside. This immediately created subnetting problems, forcing wasted IP allocation and overall disquietude amongst the cognoscenti. It also meant that your firewall was very visible to the world, and its function was rather obvious and easy to deduce. There had to be a better way. And now there is...
Dream with me for a moment: A black box, shimmering in the soft LED-green glow of the network cabinet. You take the network cable from your router, which previously went into a switch, and stick it in one of the snappy plugs in the back of the box. There's one more plug on the black box, so you grab another cable and hook the box up to the switch. You step back, and suddenly: everything looks the same. You go to all your computers. As far as you can tell from inside and outside the network, the box doesn't exist. It does nothing. A few minutes later, you have a monitor and keyboard hooked up to the back of the box. You quickly and easily begin to tweak a file that gives you fine grained control over access to your network. You shut off all access to your mailserver from the outside world except on port 25.
World-first Living Robots show set to open at Magna in March 2002
ARTIFICIAL intelligence machines, cyborgs, androids or replicants, call them what you will. But free-thinking, independently acting machines have captured the imagination of authors, film-makers, artists, the military and governments for a long time.
From 27 March 2002, a colony of Living Robots, divided into 15 predators and 6 prey, will be will be on show at the Magna Science Adventure Centre, Rotherham's £46m Millennium Commission Lottery funded attraction.
'Living Robots' is a world-first experiment into artificial evolution - a culmination of eighteen months of research by world expert and Robot Wars judge, Professor Noel Sharkey and his dedicated team at the Creative Robotics Unit at Magna (CRUM)
The Living Robots have one goal, to obtain enough energy to survive and breed. The prey find their food from light sensors within the arena, while the predators feed off prey by stalking and chasing them before sucking away their power.
This groundbreaking experiment is being transformed into a spectacular public show at Magna. The amazing exhibition will take place in a purpose built arena, designed to hold 500 people at any one time.
In place of lectures and diagrams, the groundbreaking technology used in the robots will be demonstrated to Magna visitors in spectacular 30 minute live action show - complete with atmospheric lights, smoke and music. Guests will witness the robots in their natural environment, fighting for survival, learning and evolving as time goes on.
Each show will begin in darkness. Dramatic music will flood into the arena as guests prepare themselves for the spectacular light, sound and science show. Firstly, a 'prey' robot will be introduced - a good guy.
These smaller robots are powered by light and will automatically search the arena for special light spots to refuel. It is not remote controlled, but is full of computer chips controlled by an 'artificial neuron network' - a brain - and when it moves, it is because his brain tells it to.
Secondly another prey robot is introduced and the narrator will demonstrate how the prey can recognise friend or foe. This is done by an infra-red 'sniffing'. All prey send out the same infra-red light, different to the predators, and the audience will see that the prey robots have no instinct to run from each other but are happy to graze side-by-side under the light sources.
The one prey is then sent back to its pen. As the light dims a predator will enter stage. This is higher up the food chain than the prey, and survives by feeding from their power - the bad guy. The audience will be given a demonstration as to how the predators use its long tusks to entrap the prey and the sucking the power from the prey's battery. This is instinct - not remote control.
When the demonstrations are over, the show begins. All the predators and prey are released and from this point on, there is no control. Will they fight back, will they run and hide? No-one knows, with each day, the robots change and evolve, and their actions will alter. Audience participation is encouraged, the audience is asked to each pick a favourite, a pet to cheer for throughout the show, while the narrators are on hand to answer any questions.
The show will run throughout the day, times may vary. The show is included in the Magna ticket.
An untraceable, universally verifiable voting scheme
Recent electronic voting schemes have shown the ability to protect the privacy of voters and prevent the possibility of a voter from being coerced to reveal his vote. These schemes protect the voter's identity from the vote, but do not do so unconditionally. In this paper we apply a technique called blinded signatures to a voter's ballot so that it is impossible for anyone to trace the ballot back to the voter. We achieve the desired properties of privacy, universal verifiability, convenience and untraceability at the expense of receipt-freeness.
ArsDigita is searching for energetic and accomplished individuals to join its expanding team. If you are:
Please surf our Web site to learn more about ArsDigita, its culture, and benefits. Then be sure to check out our opportunities.
speaks volumes of the quality and/or "ease-of-use" for their "Web Content Framework", doesn't it :-)
Fred von Lohmannis a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property law. Before joining EFF, Fred was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. His research focused on the impact of peer-to-peer technologies on the future of copyright. Prior to his research fellowship, Fred was an associate with the international law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, concentrating on transactions and counseling involving the Internet and intellectual property. He comments frequently on copyright law and the Internet, including issues related to online music distribution and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and has advised a variety of Internet clients, including Yahoo, Verio, Myplay, and NBCi. Fred has an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
fantastic joke. managers in panicing, techies laughing.
care to share some references to where we can read more about this? i just read the /pub/README.v72 document, and it had nothing on SMP.
Highlights of this release are as follows:
We have presented a lot of information about a relatively simple device, and as there are not really any mobile devices on the market, we have largely been comparing the AquaPad against computing solutions consumers are likely to be using such as notebooks and desktops. In that regard, the Midori Linux based AquaPad has its limitations, but they are not unworkable. As a mobile platform to browse the web the AquaPad functions well - most major websites that deliver content, or news, are built using the most widely acceptable programing. With the exception of Hotmail, we had no difficulties exploring CNN, or TransmetaZone for example.
Multimedia or artistic websites that make use of Java or Shockwave present a hurdle for the AquaPad, so that is something to be aware of. However, support for RealAudio applications like streaming audio or video, and Flash5 is superb, so I guess it's a bit of a trade off.
With its 500MHz Crusoe processor, the AquaPad seemed well equipped to handle the variety of tasks we threw at it, and users who have never used Linux before will be comforted by the Windows-like user interface. The screen size is good for most of the websites on the web at the moment, but as webpages move away from the 800x600 pixel screen support to the larger and more common 1024x768 resolutions, the AquaPad may find itself outsized. For the moment, this is not a problem however.
Probably the neatest thing about the AquaPad was its ability to remotely update the OS over the internet. Battery life is good at just over 3 hours for average web surfing, but placing the DC power port (along with the USB and headphone jacks) behind the small door was awkward. I personally would have preferred to see these ports in a recessed area or along one edge protected by rubberized covers than the fold-down hard plastic port cover used.
The unit is comfortable to hold, and the magnesium alloy casing offers a tough alternative to what would otherwise be plastic. I especially like the little spot to hold the stylus, and found the on screen keyboard acceptable in terms of speed for entering in URL addresses.
Memory is one area I think FIC could improve upon. Including a Compact Flash card with the AquaPad would be one step in the right direction, but perhaps switching out the OS's CF card for an IBM microdrive would be even better, even with Linux. FIC tell us that the versions with Windows 98/ME/2000 make us of an internal microdrive however.
While we used the AquaPad extensively for web surfing and streaming audio playback during our evaluation, the problems gaining access into Hotmail limited its use to us a mobile platform for email. An integrated email client would be an interesting addition for the device to support, especially if the memory card was included.
There really is no one line summary that we can make about the AquaPad because its uses are so varied and depend on what each individual user requires. In terms of surfing, 80% of websites we tested it on had no problems and the pages were displayed correctly. Audio quality through the speaker was so so, but via the headphones excellent. The LCD panel was easy to read and bright enough for an office environment, and the touch screen is quite user friendly once you get accustomed to it. Whether or not the AquaPad is right for you, and your intended applications is up to you, but FIC definitely have something interesting here with this little blue magnesium device, and it is sure to turn heads!
Software has no intrinsic value. The value it has is that which is perceived by the user. Is a copy of Windows XP worth a family of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Is a copy of Microsoft Office worth two families of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Proprietary software is about revenue generation, not capability. Furthermore, there is nothing which says free software cannot co-exist with proprietary. If a particular capability requires proprietary, by all means, get a copy. But, does every capability require proprietary software? Certainly not.
The will and determination of the South African people has survived much greater hardship than software bugs with no answers, or support. The question to ask yourself here is: Will the South African Government be willing to pay $120USD per incident for software bugs that will likely still have no answer? In my experience, if there is a solution it is, "upgrade to the latest version for another $199USD."
The greater good is that which serves the most people. If you can make a case for proprietary that serves more people, then that's what you should do. However, I do not think that is possible, given the freedom (from corporate America) inherent in free and open source software.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute...
you just know that every Tom, Dick and AC are going to try this service. this being just reopened I wouldn't think BBC have the required iron in place to handle the slashdot effect (very few have). at the end of the day, BBC will think this is a bad idea as it just keep crashing their servers. just my .02 euro.
The 18 year only Jon Lech Johansen has been indicted for breaking the "computer trespasing" paragraph of the norwegian criminal code.
Thursday January 10, 2002 14:02, updated 14:53.
This is confirmed to NTB by attorney Inger Marie Sunde. Johansen has since January 2000 been charged by the norwegian financial crimes unit (Økokrim) after being reported by the american movie- and entertainment organization Movie Picture Association (MPA).
The background is that Johansen in 1999 participated in creating a program, DeCSS, that make it possible to play back DVD movie under the Linux operating system, and made it available on the internet. The program can also be used to decrypt the content of DVD-disks and makes it possible to copy the movie.
Johansen is indicted for participating in breaking the protection system Content Scrambling System (CSS), that protects the content of DVD-disks from copying.
Johansen is indicted based on the criminal code paragraph 145, parts two and tree Sunde informs the NTB.
From the inditement:
"- For by breaking a protection scheme, of by similar activities unjustly having gained access to data stored of transmitted by electronic or other technical means and by having caused damage by gaining or using such unjustly obtained knowledge."
The charged offense carries a maximum sentence of 6 months in prison.
Current trademark laws are "bugs". We need to fugure out how to remove these bugs, not just how to patch the symptoms.
any first year cs studen knows it can't be done.