Re:Selling but not demanding payment
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GPL FAQ
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· Score: 2
Regarding point 1, I earlier understood you to mean that you would require the buyer of the software to also buy the service contract. If this is correct, my point still stands, because that requirement in and of itself violates the spirit of the GPL. If I misunderstood, and you meant the service contract to be optional and separate from the software, then you are correct.
Regarding point 2, this is pretty irrelevant to the discussion, but I can't resist. The passage you quote does not suggest that assigning copyright to the FSF is equivalent to putting the software in the public domain. Read that passage again, and notice the use of the word "or". They are describing two options, one of which is to assign copyright to the FSF, and the other of which is to put the code in the public domain. Either one ensures a relatively simple copyright status for potential defense of the GPL.
Also, they aren't explicit enough about this, but they are only talking about contributions to FSF-copyrighted GNU software, not GPLed software in general.
Re:Selling but not demanding payment
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 2
Er, no. Charging a monthly fee requires a licensing agreement or contract of some sort enforcing the payment of the fee. This would constitute an additional restriction on the software, which the GPL does not allow. The copyright holder could, of course, release it under a modified GPL which allowed this, but that would be such a severe change that it would no longer be the GPL.
Re:Selling but not demanding payment
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 2
Yes, but that's entirely beside the point. We're talking about GPL license terms, not the economics of open source. The fact is that the GPL permits the selling of the software (unlike a lot of other freeware licenses). Whether or not it is economically workable in the long run, a large number of companies have made a significant amount of revenue doing it. More importantly, a lot of people have benefitted from the convenience of a boxed distribution- Linux never would have approached its current popularity if you could not sell it. Take a look at the Linux shelf at your local electronics store- all those boxes aren't going away, whether Red Hat goes under or not.
In short, the success of Linux is built in part on this "purely academic" distinction.
I assume you mean the largest single telescope in the world?
Re:Selling but not demanding payment
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 2
It is far from purely academic. Yes, it does mean that I cannot follow the proprietary software business model of forcing people to pay to get software, but it does mean I can charge people, for example, for the convenience of the software in a box with a manual, etc. The obvious example is RedHat- I can download a RedHat distro for free, but I can also buy it from a store, as I have on at least one occasion. And, to judge from the shelves at my local electronics store, I'm not the only one. So yes, people do pay for GPLed software, they just don't have to.
There is also the scenario of a piece of software which has never been distributed. In that case, I can force my first customer (and only my first customer) to buy the software from me at my price without violating the GPL. Every subsequent customer, however, has (at least in theory) the option of getting it from my prior customers at a price of their chosing. I will grant you that this scenario, however, is more or less "purely academic".
Speaking as a part-time sysadmin in a Solaris environment, I can only hope that referring to Solaris as one of "the most secure OSes" was a grotesque joke. I would not categorically say that it is worse than Linux or Windows, but it is definitely no better- new exploits for Solaris come out all the time- currently I know of one rootshell exploit which is just hanging over our heads because it's in a subsystem which can't be turned off, and which Sun has so far failed to patch. I can't speak to the other OSes you mention, but "how many expolits do you hear of for such-and-such" is totally irrelevant to the actual security of the system, and the fact that you include Solaris in the list makes me rather skeptical of the rest of it.
I'm very well aware of the kind of software we're talking about here, and I know that, given that you're committing to an ASP, it's better to have that backup. What I'm saying is that such a scheme does not come close to alleviating the substantial risk associated with commiting to an ASP, and that point still stands.
They don't necessarily have to develop the software, but they do need to serve it- remember, the company's infrastructure is set up for a remotely served application, and so in order to avoid a lot of transition hassle, they would need to set up a server of their own which mirrors the functionality of the ASP's server. While I've never done anything like that, I get the distinct impression that it's non-trivial.
The poster mentions an escrow scheme and licensing so that the customers can, presumably, take over the software they are licensing if the provider bails. However, this is not an adequate solution.
The whole premise of application services is that it is not economical for the customers to purchase, install, and support their business software, and must rely on an outside service provider to do those things for them. Is a company which considers it uneconomical to even perform these normal IT-type tasks going to be willing to take over the development and provision (even if only internal) of the service in question? Not bloody likely. Even if a company is forced to take on such a burden by sheer business necessity, it will involve a huge amount of disruption to the normal activities of the business.
Such a contractual solution is no solution at all. Companies which use application-services vendors to provide software essential to their core business must understand that they are in effect betting their company on the hope that the ASP will not go under- a rather foolish bet in this industry, unless the payoffs are truly enormous.
Don't get too excited. Microsoft has a couple options here: change Maryland law, change the TOS, or give up (potentially) billions in revenues by banning Marylanders in order to avoid the onerous task of changing the TOS. Which do you think it will pick?
Not true. The Hotmail user who recieved the mail is the one who agreed to the Hotmail TOS. The Linux developers never made any agreement with Hotmail. Thus, MS would have no grounds to appropriate IP belonging to the kernel developers. Even if the TOS gave them that right, the person who agreed to the TOS had no authority to grant them that right, anymore than I can sign a paper authorizing you to give away free copies of Windows.
Similarly, if a kernel-dev mail came from a Hotmail account, even under the craziest readings of the Hotmail TOS, the only IP which MS could appropriate is that belonging to person who sent it through Hotmail, not the entire kernel, because the sender doesn't own the rights to the entire kernel. Still, unraveling a mess like that could be ugly.
Sorry, the Slashdot story to which I am posting, the post I made, and the article to which I linked, all refer to the mini-series. I understand that there is some potential for confusion, but I assure you, you are the one who is confused.
There's an interesting backstory to this DVD, about why it doesn't have the director's cut, anamorphic widescreen, decent special features, or Dolby Digital 5.1, as was originally advertised. You can read more about it here. The short version is the consumer got screwed by inter-studio bickering and inane licensing issues. Oh, and if you liked the series, save your money, because they'll be doing a special edition DVD soon.
Also, waste radioactivity will decay exponentially, so it will not be a hazard in about 100 years after disposal.
Sorry, you needed to pay more attention in your high-school science courses. Radiocative waste decays not exponentially, but inverse-exponentially. A typical half-life for radioactive waste might be 10,000 years (they can run anywhere from seconds to millions of years, but it's the long-term ones that are worrisome). This means that in 10,000 years, half of the material will have decayed into a new form (which might very well be radioactive itself). In another 10,000 years, half of what's left will have decayed. And so fourth.
So, your statement is doubly wrong- the waste decays inverse-exponentially, which is bad news, not good news, and 100 years is on the lower end of the scale of decay rates we're talking about.
I'm well aware of the distinction between XML and XSL et. al., and my point was exactly that- by devoting itself to content, XML clears up the content/formatting boundary. However, I felt that going into the technical details would be beside the point, especially in a post that was already too long, so I referred to XML in an aggregate sense, including XML itself and the adjoining formatting/presentation tehnologies (XSL and whatever else).
Hee-hee : ) Cute. I'll be really amused if NiM sees this. (I once got him in a slashdot discussion about gun control)
Yeah, a get-together would be awesome- I miss all you guys, and since Neglekt went down I haven't really been able to keep in touch.
My sense of propriety is kicking in, however, so why don't we move this to e-mail before the trolls take notice... My e-mail address is listed in my/. info. Drop me a line!
This is a rather naive question- have you used LaTeX at all? I say this as a dedicated LaTeX user: LaTeX just isn't suited for web applications for a huge number of reasons.
First of all, you say HTML is a nightmare to code in. Perhaps if you are trying to go all the way with CSS, sophisticated visual layout, and so fourth, but I can knock out a simple, standards-compliant web page in 15-20 minutes. Not a pretty one, but a functional one. I can do that with LaTeX, but only with a library of templates which I have built up over the years. You just can't do LaTeX quick-and-dirty. It's not designed for it.
Second, there is the issue of visual formatting. LaTeX and HTML both, in theory, are based on the principle of content-based markup- you specify the data in content terms, and the browser/LaTeX engine determines how best to format it for display. Anyone who has ever used either of these languages knows that this is a total lie, especially for HTML. All professional HTML work centers on various hacks to achieve direct visual formatting of the page, something which HTML is fortunately quite amentable to. LaTeX, on the other hand, is a huge pain in the ass if you're trying to control the look and layout of a document- the LaTeX engine knows what's best , and it's sure as hell not going to take advice from you! You can do visual formatting the proper way, by redefining commands and LaTeX variables to get LaTeX to understand the visual format you are looking for. However, this is an enormous time outlay, and is completely impractical for anything less than, say, a book.
More fundamentally, LaTeX and HTML, although they were originally concieved for similar purposes (content markup for visual display of academic papers), have evolved in radically different directions. While LaTeX has stuck pretty close to that original intent, HTML has become almost a GUI specification language, with all kinds of capabilities which LaTeX simply doesn't have. The proof is in the pudding: Show me a LaTeX version of the Amazon page. Or the Slashdot main page. Even ignoring the issues like linking that you mention, it is for all practical purposes impossible. It would require literally weeks of dedicated LaTeX hacking, and the result would be a horrific kludge. LaTeX is, and is likely to remain, a language for typesetting documents for the purpose of conventional, dead-tree publication. Any other application of it would be a gross violation of a fundamental principle of hacking: the right tools for the right job.
In short, LaTeX and HTML have only their theoretical conception in common. For all practical intents and purposes they are so vastly different that using LaTeX as a general web language is inconceiveable. There is, however, a new language emerging which promises to clean up the blurred boundaries of content and visual formatting, and get rid of the most flagrant horrors of HTML. If you want to see an HTML alternative, go look into XML.
what about all the knowledge gained by running a re-usable spacecraft program? what about all the commercial sattelites delivered, providing basic things like GPS, Long Distance telephone relays, DSS systems? I use all three of those examples nearly every day! with the exception of gps, which is only usefull when I go boating. The infrastructure of the US and the entire world has been developed wonderfully by those extra 80+ shuttle missions.
I agree- our planetary satellite network is a wonderful thing. Imagine what it would have been like without the Space Shuttle getting in the way. Yes, you read that right. The Space Shuttle has been a tremendous detriment to the efficient deployment of satellite technology. The technology does exist, and has existed for quite some time, to put a satellite in orbit economically via unmanned booster rockets. NASA, however, made a definite descision to deliver payloads exclusively via the much more expensive and inefficient Space Shuttle, because they felt that only manned missions could command the necessary public support, despite the known economic and technological advantages of unmanned delivery. Thus, after the Challenger disaster, satellite and planetary probe launches just stopped, because there was no backup. Those wonderful systems you describe exist despite the Shuttle, not because of it.
Space travel is not healthy. You dissolve in a matter of days, finding equilibrium with the forces on your body. muscle tone plummets, all the way down to your core, your heart. How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions? is that knowledge worthless? Besides the fact that mr. Glenn is a bonafide Hero, an accomplished statesman, and a leader amongst his peers, he is amazingly brave to have requested the mission. And so is Nasa, too, cause it would have been disasterous if he'd died up there.
I am aware of the effects of microgravity on the human body. I am aware of the importance of understanding this phenomenon for the purposes of future space travel (note the word _travel_, as opposed to going in circles). However, I submit that, for the near future, the knowlegde gained from the Glenn mission is worthless, or nearly so- NASA has no plans to send septuaginarians to Mars, or indeed send them into space at all, unless they happen to be politically connected. The only worthwhile research in this area is on able-bodied adults of the sort likely to be engagin in space travel in the near future.
Even if you argue that the study of geriatric astonautics is worthwhile as pure science, which I can accept, the Glenn mission isn't science. Your question "How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions?" Is very apt. The answer, as you know, is "none." Even an 8th grader doing a science project can tell you that to be useful, an experiment must consist of more than one datum. Observations of a single subject are scientifically next to worthless. Your arguments as to the heroism and bravery of Glenn and NASA may or may not be true, but are entirely irrelevant.
And don't forget the zillions of zero-g experiments in medicine, material science, gravity/relativity, etc etc etc.
And never mind that most of them have earth-bound equivalents or are of dubious scientific import, or could be done just as well on the Shuttle. Again, I say show me the scientific results of the past 30 years of manned spaceflight, compared to the kinds of results similar amounts of money have produced in earthbound science. Ultimately, the clearest argument is the fact that no top-rate scientist in any field (who is not working on the ISS project) is willing to claim that the ISS is scientifically worthwhile, given the money spent.
It's easy to be a skeptic.
No, it's easy to be a believer. Take for example your claim about the "zillions of experiments" that could be done on ISS. Do you actually know of any, or did you just read that in the propaganda pieces NASA's been putting out (note, by the way, the lack of specific examples in their PR, because there are none). To be a skeptic you actually have to think for yourself. Until recently, I agreed with you, but the weight of evidence has forced me to take my new position. I would like to believe that the ISS is a scientific godsend and a triumph of the human spirit, but it just ain't so.
That's the great thing about unmanned spaceflight- it's cheap enough that it can be done without some bigwigs taking any initiative, as has to happen for a monstrosity like the ISS to be built.
I absolutely agree with you that given that it's going up we might as well make the best of it, and I welcome whatever scientific benefits derive from it. However, I do think we need to be aware that it was a mistake. The attitude that only manned spaceflight can capture the human imagination is a gross underestimation of the human spirit, as Sojourner proved. The space program holds immense promise if it can be wrested from the grasp those who see the human spirit only in manned-spaceflight
We did not spend that kind of money to develop the jet engine. The jet engine was a natural and (on this scale) economical extension of both public- and private-sector work, not the result of stuffing billions of dollars into a predesigned pipe dream. Real innovation and invention comes from many small projects, not one large, government-sponsored all-or-nothing monolith. And speaking of propulsion, which strikes you as a better research platform for studying space travel: A space probe that actually travels, or a space station that orbits?
In the last 10 years Shuttle flights have been responsible for the Hubble Space Telescope - giving us a much clearer understanding of our universe and how we fit into it. The Hubble needed human servicing to have ever completed its mission.
I'll buy part of this one- Hubble has been a fantastically sucessful and important project, and it did need human servicing. However, it could easily have been launched aboard an unmanned vehicle, and the service missions account for only 2 or 3 out of the 80+ shuttle missions.
We've been able to study the effects of spaceflight on the human body, which mimic many of the changes in the aging process. If we're going into space, we need that kind of information.
I think the bankruptcy of this argument was proved when NASA attempted to actually put a scientific face on the bald-faced political horse-trading that put John Glenn on the Space Shuttle. These people actually claimed that there was scientific benefit to be had from the study of a single septugenarian selected for his political connections, rather than his suitability for scientific study. To give you an idea of the level of science that was taking place on that mission, they actually almost conducted a study of the effect of Melatonin on his adaptation to the shuttle's 90-minute 'day.' All very well and good, but you hardly need to go into space to simulate a 90 minute day. The same experiment could be done in a motel room by pulling the shades and putting a timer on the lightswitch, as Park points out in his aforementioned book. This experiment was canceled at the last minute- for medical reasons, not because of its total scientific worthlessness.
More generally, yes, we need to know about human adaptation to microgravity if we are to engage in long-term space travel. However, we've already learned most of what we need to from Mir and Skylab, and I sincerely doubt we will learn anything truly new from the ISS in this regard. When we start engaging in long-term space travel, it will almost certainly require artifical gravity, if the passengers are to be remotely functional when they arrive.
We've been able to monitor and observe earth-bound phenomena to an extent that has never before been possible, and would not have been possible with robotic craft.
I really don't buy this one. Robotic craft are more patient, more verasatile, more thorough, and far more clear-sighted and functional than any human observer. Essentially all of the scientifically meaningful terristrial observation has been done by automated systems, not humans. The only exception is the (admittedly spectacular) photography produced by the shuttle astronaouts, which have plenty of artistic, but little scientific merit. Even that could have been done (and possibly done better) by a satellite, if we really wanted to do it.
We've given people something to hope for. Sure, robotic missions are great and they bring us loads of scientific data at no human risk, but they lack something that the human imagination needs. No robotic explorer will ever overshadow Neil Armstrong first setting his foot down on a foreign body in space. Who cares about the Russian Luna and American Surveyor probes after that? The world's attention was focused on space because that was a human being out there.
But that's my point! There's no glory or triumph of the human spirit in the space station at all! It will capture the imagination of a few literate geeks for all of about 5 minutes. It's boldly going where dozens of people have gone before. Exactly how much attention gets paid to the latest shuttle launch? Compare that with the astonishing coverage of Sojourner's trip to Mars on the web and in the media, or the power of the single image the (unmanned) Hubble produced of the Eagle Nebula. Multiply that by the ISS's budget and you would have some real human excitement. Sure, give me a trip to Mars and you'll see some Armstrong-era excitement, but the ISS is one giant leap for a man, and one small step for mankind, and everybody knows it. It will be good for a few weeks of media excitement, and then will fade into the background as the shuttles do now.
The missions you list are indeed in various planning stages, but that doesn't alter the fact that much, much more could be done if NASA's planetary exploration had access to the kind of money the ISS is getting stuffed with. It also doesn't change the fact that after a couple of failures caused by the minimal Mars budget, that entire program has been delayed even further.
As for your point about the Venus probe, the costs of lifting such a probe out of Earth's gravity well pale in comparison to the cost of the ISS. The ISS will never pay itself back as a construction platform. To begin with, it is totally unsuited for construction work. All of the costs of manufacturing a probe on earth would be increased by (literally) orders of magnitude if that construction were done aboard the space station. Moreover, unless you're proposing asteroid mining (itself prohibitively expensive), nothing is being saved- you still have to lift the raw materials out of Earth's gravity well, and that cost only gets larger if you do it in several trips. The ISS saves you absolutely nothing in this regard.
Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of the space program in general terms.
The ISS is a huge waste of time, money, and national effort. After 3 decades of going in circles (literally) around the earth, the latest, greatest thing in space travel involves... going in more circles around the earth. The habitat is slightly larger, which I'm sure makes the astronauts very happy, and it's a nice, warm and fuzzy internationally cooperative project, but the fact is that it has no point, no purpose or meaning, from a scientific or even a human standpoint.
Everything that we could learn by going in circles, we have learned. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Soyuz, Mir, the Space Shuttle, and so on ad infinitum. Dozens of humans have orbited the earth thousands of times and spent countless man-hours on hundreds of projects and experiments, for decidedly marginal benefit. Early on, sure, we learned a lot, but the benefits have fallen off dramatically. Can you name one substantial scientific benefit gained in the last 10 years of manned space flight? The last 20? No fair citing something itself only relevant to space flight. No serious scientist argues that there will be more than marginal scientific benefit to the ISS, and most of what benefit there is could be realized by the Space Shuttle more cheaply.
Whereas many people see the glory of yet another semi-permanent human habitat in space, I see all the fleets of the Sojourners and Mars Rovers and planetary exploration robots (and perhaps manned flights) that could have been paid for with the billions being spent on this pointless propaganda piece. That one tiny battery-powered rover, the Sojourner, produced more meaningful science, and probably inspired more future scientists with the thrill of discovery, than 10 years of the Space Shuttle trips which the ISS is merely and elaboration of. And yet, NASA's Mars program is being substantially curtailed from its' already very limited budget, while billions of dollars are poured down the bottomless ISS pit.
The solar system is a spectacularly fascinating place. Any planetary scientist or astronomer could name a dozen extremely worthwhile space exploration projects that aren't getting worked on. How about taking a close look at Pluto, which we still know almost nothing about? How about a closer look at Europa, an excellent candidate for the presence of life? How about trying to land a probe on Venus capable of surviving more than a few hours?
With all of this astonishing diversity, and all of this incredible discovery waiting to happen, we are spending our time, energy, and money exploring the most throughoughly explored and utterly dull part of space- the part of it only a hundred miles above our heads.
For more info, I heartily reccomend Robert Park's excellent book, Voodoo Science.
To my knowledge, no, at least not technically. PovRay is supposed to be in the midst of a C++ rewrite, but no public activity as yet. On the other hand, one could argue that ray-tracers written in non-OO languages are still essentially OO, with a variety of unpleasant hacks to make them act OO. Still, writing one without those hacks would be nice.
Ray-tracing is something of a hobby of mine, and with any luck I will have just such a project open for business on SourceForge within a few months. We'll see if I'm motivated enough to get it moving.
Enforced, that is. Not real ones, anyway. The world of computing is littered with dead or undead standards "enforced" by government fiat, corporate white papers, or other forms of "enforcement." The fact is that true standards, like TCP/IP, exist as standards because they work, and it is in the interests of all concerned to comply with them.
If I build a packet of random data and toss it out onto my network, the TCP/IP police won't come and get me for failing to comply with the standards. Similarly, if I connect to an FTP server and start trying to talk to it in english, no jack-booted IETF thugs will show up at my door. On the other hand, my packet will get tossed out as soon as it reaches a router, and the FTP server just isn't going to send me the file I keep asking it for. I comply with the TCP/IP and FTP standards because it is in my interests to do so. Otherwise, things don't work.
Note that this requires a key distinction be made between a standard and a specification. A specification is what passes through the comittee and gets written up in a white paper. A standard is what people actually use. People violate specifications all the time, and the world continues to turn, so long as there is a standard. Most internet standards were standard long before they were specified by the IETF, for example the mapping from port names to services. On the other hand, there is HTML. There is no HTML standard. There are plenty of specifications, of course, but no standard, which is why being a web designer is such a nightmarish job.
From your question, however, I get the impression that a specification, not a standard, is what you are creating. Honestly, the only thing you can do is make sure your specification is so good that it is adopted as a standard, a process which can only take place voluntarily. Quality is the only real determinant of whether a specification becomes a standard, and no amount of enforcement can save a specification that people don't want to follow.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding point 1, I earlier understood you to mean that you would require the buyer of the software to also buy the service contract. If this is correct, my point still stands, because that requirement in and of itself violates the spirit of the GPL. If I misunderstood, and you meant the service contract to be optional and separate from the software, then you are correct.
Regarding point 2, this is pretty irrelevant to the discussion, but I can't resist. The passage you quote does not suggest that assigning copyright to the FSF is equivalent to putting the software in the public domain. Read that passage again, and notice the use of the word "or". They are describing two options, one of which is to assign copyright to the FSF, and the other of which is to put the code in the public domain. Either one ensures a relatively simple copyright status for potential defense of the GPL.
Also, they aren't explicit enough about this, but they are only talking about contributions to FSF-copyrighted GNU software, not GPLed software in general.
Er, no. Charging a monthly fee requires a licensing agreement or contract of some sort enforcing the payment of the fee. This would constitute an additional restriction on the software, which the GPL does not allow. The copyright holder could, of course, release it under a modified GPL which allowed this, but that would be such a severe change that it would no longer be the GPL.
Yes, but that's entirely beside the point. We're talking about GPL license terms, not the economics of open source. The fact is that the GPL permits the selling of the software (unlike a lot of other freeware licenses). Whether or not it is economically workable in the long run, a large number of companies have made a significant amount of revenue doing it. More importantly, a lot of people have benefitted from the convenience of a boxed distribution- Linux never would have approached its current popularity if you could not sell it. Take a look at the Linux shelf at your local electronics store- all those boxes aren't going away, whether Red Hat goes under or not.
In short, the success of Linux is built in part on this "purely academic" distinction.
I assume you mean the largest single telescope in the world?
It is far from purely academic. Yes, it does mean that I cannot follow the proprietary software business model of forcing people to pay to get software, but it does mean I can charge people, for example, for the convenience of the software in a box with a manual, etc. The obvious example is RedHat- I can download a RedHat distro for free, but I can also buy it from a store, as I have on at least one occasion. And, to judge from the shelves at my local electronics store, I'm not the only one. So yes, people do pay for GPLed software, they just don't have to.
There is also the scenario of a piece of software which has never been distributed. In that case, I can force my first customer (and only my first customer) to buy the software from me at my price without violating the GPL. Every subsequent customer, however, has (at least in theory) the option of getting it from my prior customers at a price of their chosing. I will grant you that this scenario, however, is more or less "purely academic".
Speaking as a part-time sysadmin in a Solaris environment, I can only hope that referring to Solaris as one of "the most secure OSes" was a grotesque joke. I would not categorically say that it is worse than Linux or Windows, but it is definitely no better- new exploits for Solaris come out all the time- currently I know of one rootshell exploit which is just hanging over our heads because it's in a subsystem which can't be turned off, and which Sun has so far failed to patch. I can't speak to the other OSes you mention, but "how many expolits do you hear of for such-and-such" is totally irrelevant to the actual security of the system, and the fact that you include Solaris in the list makes me rather skeptical of the rest of it.
I'm very well aware of the kind of software we're talking about here, and I know that, given that you're committing to an ASP, it's better to have that backup. What I'm saying is that such a scheme does not come close to alleviating the substantial risk associated with commiting to an ASP, and that point still stands.
They don't necessarily have to develop the software, but they do need to serve it- remember, the company's infrastructure is set up for a remotely served application, and so in order to avoid a lot of transition hassle, they would need to set up a server of their own which mirrors the functionality of the ASP's server. While I've never done anything like that, I get the distinct impression that it's non-trivial.
The poster mentions an escrow scheme and licensing so that the customers can, presumably, take over the software they are licensing if the provider bails. However, this is not an adequate solution.
The whole premise of application services is that it is not economical for the customers to purchase, install, and support their business software, and must rely on an outside service provider to do those things for them. Is a company which considers it uneconomical to even perform these normal IT-type tasks going to be willing to take over the development and provision (even if only internal) of the service in question? Not bloody likely. Even if a company is forced to take on such a burden by sheer business necessity, it will involve a huge amount of disruption to the normal activities of the business.
Such a contractual solution is no solution at all. Companies which use application-services vendors to provide software essential to their core business must understand that they are in effect betting their company on the hope that the ASP will not go under- a rather foolish bet in this industry, unless the payoffs are truly enormous.
Don't get too excited. Microsoft has a couple options here: change Maryland law, change the TOS, or give up (potentially) billions in revenues by banning Marylanders in order to avoid the onerous task of changing the TOS. Which do you think it will pick?
Not true. The Hotmail user who recieved the mail is the one who agreed to the Hotmail TOS. The Linux developers never made any agreement with Hotmail. Thus, MS would have no grounds to appropriate IP belonging to the kernel developers. Even if the TOS gave them that right, the person who agreed to the TOS had no authority to grant them that right, anymore than I can sign a paper authorizing you to give away free copies of Windows.
Similarly, if a kernel-dev mail came from a Hotmail account, even under the craziest readings of the Hotmail TOS, the only IP which MS could appropriate is that belonging to person who sent it through Hotmail, not the entire kernel, because the sender doesn't own the rights to the entire kernel. Still, unraveling a mess like that could be ugly.
Sorry, the Slashdot story to which I am posting, the post I made, and the article to which I linked, all refer to the mini-series. I understand that there is some potential for confusion, but I assure you, you are the one who is confused.
There's an interesting backstory to this DVD, about why it doesn't have the director's cut, anamorphic widescreen, decent special features, or Dolby Digital 5.1, as was originally advertised. You can read more about it here. The short version is the consumer got screwed by inter-studio bickering and inane licensing issues. Oh, and if you liked the series, save your money, because they'll be doing a special edition DVD soon.
Sorry, you needed to pay more attention in your high-school science courses. Radiocative waste decays not exponentially, but inverse-exponentially. A typical half-life for radioactive waste might be 10,000 years (they can run anywhere from seconds to millions of years, but it's the long-term ones that are worrisome). This means that in 10,000 years, half of the material will have decayed into a new form (which might very well be radioactive itself). In another 10,000 years, half of what's left will have decayed. And so fourth.
So, your statement is doubly wrong- the waste decays inverse-exponentially, which is bad news, not good news, and 100 years is on the lower end of the scale of decay rates we're talking about.
I'm well aware of the distinction between XML and XSL et. al., and my point was exactly that- by devoting itself to content, XML clears up the content/formatting boundary. However, I felt that going into the technical details would be beside the point, especially in a post that was already too long, so I referred to XML in an aggregate sense, including XML itself and the adjoining formatting/presentation tehnologies (XSL and whatever else).
Hee-hee : ) Cute. I'll be really amused if NiM sees this. (I once got him in a slashdot discussion about gun control)
Yeah, a get-together would be awesome- I miss all you guys, and since Neglekt went down I haven't really been able to keep in touch.
My sense of propriety is kicking in, however, so why don't we move this to e-mail before the trolls take notice... My e-mail address is listed in my /. info. Drop me a line!
This is a rather naive question- have you used LaTeX at all? I say this as a dedicated LaTeX user: LaTeX just isn't suited for web applications for a huge number of reasons.
First of all, you say HTML is a nightmare to code in. Perhaps if you are trying to go all the way with CSS, sophisticated visual layout, and so fourth, but I can knock out a simple, standards-compliant web page in 15-20 minutes. Not a pretty one, but a functional one. I can do that with LaTeX, but only with a library of templates which I have built up over the years. You just can't do LaTeX quick-and-dirty. It's not designed for it.
Second, there is the issue of visual formatting. LaTeX and HTML both, in theory, are based on the principle of content-based markup- you specify the data in content terms, and the browser/LaTeX engine determines how best to format it for display. Anyone who has ever used either of these languages knows that this is a total lie, especially for HTML. All professional HTML work centers on various hacks to achieve direct visual formatting of the page, something which HTML is fortunately quite amentable to. LaTeX, on the other hand, is a huge pain in the ass if you're trying to control the look and layout of a document- the LaTeX engine knows what's best , and it's sure as hell not going to take advice from you! You can do visual formatting the proper way, by redefining commands and LaTeX variables to get LaTeX to understand the visual format you are looking for. However, this is an enormous time outlay, and is completely impractical for anything less than, say, a book.
More fundamentally, LaTeX and HTML, although they were originally concieved for similar purposes (content markup for visual display of academic papers), have evolved in radically different directions. While LaTeX has stuck pretty close to that original intent, HTML has become almost a GUI specification language, with all kinds of capabilities which LaTeX simply doesn't have. The proof is in the pudding: Show me a LaTeX version of the Amazon page. Or the Slashdot main page. Even ignoring the issues like linking that you mention, it is for all practical purposes impossible. It would require literally weeks of dedicated LaTeX hacking, and the result would be a horrific kludge. LaTeX is, and is likely to remain, a language for typesetting documents for the purpose of conventional, dead-tree publication. Any other application of it would be a gross violation of a fundamental principle of hacking: the right tools for the right job.
In short, LaTeX and HTML have only their theoretical conception in common. For all practical intents and purposes they are so vastly different that using LaTeX as a general web language is inconceiveable. There is, however, a new language emerging which promises to clean up the blurred boundaries of content and visual formatting, and get rid of the most flagrant horrors of HTML. If you want to see an HTML alternative, go look into XML.
what about all the knowledge gained by running a re-usable spacecraft program? what about all the commercial sattelites delivered, providing basic things like GPS, Long Distance telephone relays, DSS systems? I use all three of those examples nearly every day! with the exception of gps, which is only usefull when I go boating. The infrastructure of the US and the entire world has been developed wonderfully by those extra 80+ shuttle missions.
I agree- our planetary satellite network is a wonderful thing. Imagine what it would have been like without the Space Shuttle getting in the way. Yes, you read that right. The Space Shuttle has been a tremendous detriment to the efficient deployment of satellite technology. The technology does exist, and has existed for quite some time, to put a satellite in orbit economically via unmanned booster rockets. NASA, however, made a definite descision to deliver payloads exclusively via the much more expensive and inefficient Space Shuttle, because they felt that only manned missions could command the necessary public support, despite the known economic and technological advantages of unmanned delivery. Thus, after the Challenger disaster, satellite and planetary probe launches just stopped, because there was no backup. Those wonderful systems you describe exist despite the Shuttle, not because of it.
Space travel is not healthy. You dissolve in a matter of days, finding equilibrium with the forces on your body. muscle tone plummets, all the way down to your core, your heart. How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions? is that knowledge worthless? Besides the fact that mr. Glenn is a bonafide Hero, an accomplished statesman, and a leader amongst his peers, he is amazingly brave to have requested the mission. And so is Nasa, too, cause it would have been disasterous if he'd died up there.
I am aware of the effects of microgravity on the human body. I am aware of the importance of understanding this phenomenon for the purposes of future space travel (note the word _travel_, as opposed to going in circles). However, I submit that, for the near future, the knowlegde gained from the Glenn mission is worthless, or nearly so- NASA has no plans to send septuaginarians to Mars, or indeed send them into space at all, unless they happen to be politically connected. The only worthwhile research in this area is on able-bodied adults of the sort likely to be engagin in space travel in the near future.
Even if you argue that the study of geriatric astonautics is worthwhile as pure science, which I can accept, the Glenn mission isn't science. Your question "How many other septugenarians have we observed under those conditions?" Is very apt. The answer, as you know, is "none." Even an 8th grader doing a science project can tell you that to be useful, an experiment must consist of more than one datum. Observations of a single subject are scientifically next to worthless. Your arguments as to the heroism and bravery of Glenn and NASA may or may not be true, but are entirely irrelevant.
And don't forget the zillions of zero-g experiments in medicine, material science, gravity/relativity, etc etc etc.
And never mind that most of them have earth-bound equivalents or are of dubious scientific import, or could be done just as well on the Shuttle. Again, I say show me the scientific results of the past 30 years of manned spaceflight, compared to the kinds of results similar amounts of money have produced in earthbound science. Ultimately, the clearest argument is the fact that no top-rate scientist in any field (who is not working on the ISS project) is willing to claim that the ISS is scientifically worthwhile, given the money spent.
It's easy to be a skeptic.
No, it's easy to be a believer. Take for example your claim about the "zillions of experiments" that could be done on ISS. Do you actually know of any, or did you just read that in the propaganda pieces NASA's been putting out (note, by the way, the lack of specific examples in their PR, because there are none). To be a skeptic you actually have to think for yourself. Until recently, I agreed with you, but the weight of evidence has forced me to take my new position. I would like to believe that the ISS is a scientific godsend and a triumph of the human spirit, but it just ain't so.
No, I was thinking more along the lines of parabolas and figure-eights of the sort used to travel from one planetary body to another.
That's the great thing about unmanned spaceflight- it's cheap enough that it can be done without some bigwigs taking any initiative, as has to happen for a monstrosity like the ISS to be built.
I absolutely agree with you that given that it's going up we might as well make the best of it, and I welcome whatever scientific benefits derive from it. However, I do think we need to be aware that it was a mistake. The attitude that only manned spaceflight can capture the human imagination is a gross underestimation of the human spirit, as Sojourner proved. The space program holds immense promise if it can be wrested from the grasp those who see the human spirit only in manned-spaceflight
We did not spend that kind of money to develop the jet engine. The jet engine was a natural and (on this scale) economical extension of both public- and private-sector work, not the result of stuffing billions of dollars into a predesigned pipe dream. Real innovation and invention comes from many small projects, not one large, government-sponsored all-or-nothing monolith. And speaking of propulsion, which strikes you as a better research platform for studying space travel: A space probe that actually travels, or a space station that orbits?
In the last 10 years Shuttle flights have been responsible for the Hubble Space Telescope - giving us a much clearer understanding of our universe and how we fit into it. The Hubble needed human servicing to have ever completed its mission.
I'll buy part of this one- Hubble has been a fantastically sucessful and important project, and it did need human servicing. However, it could easily have been launched aboard an unmanned vehicle, and the service missions account for only 2 or 3 out of the 80+ shuttle missions.
We've been able to study the effects of spaceflight on the human body, which mimic many of the changes in the aging process. If we're going into space, we need that kind of information.
I think the bankruptcy of this argument was proved when NASA attempted to actually put a scientific face on the bald-faced political horse-trading that put John Glenn on the Space Shuttle. These people actually claimed that there was scientific benefit to be had from the study of a single septugenarian selected for his political connections, rather than his suitability for scientific study. To give you an idea of the level of science that was taking place on that mission, they actually almost conducted a study of the effect of Melatonin on his adaptation to the shuttle's 90-minute 'day.' All very well and good, but you hardly need to go into space to simulate a 90 minute day. The same experiment could be done in a motel room by pulling the shades and putting a timer on the lightswitch, as Park points out in his aforementioned book. This experiment was canceled at the last minute- for medical reasons, not because of its total scientific worthlessness.
More generally, yes, we need to know about human adaptation to microgravity if we are to engage in long-term space travel. However, we've already learned most of what we need to from Mir and Skylab, and I sincerely doubt we will learn anything truly new from the ISS in this regard. When we start engaging in long-term space travel, it will almost certainly require artifical gravity, if the passengers are to be remotely functional when they arrive.
We've been able to monitor and observe earth-bound phenomena to an extent that has never before been possible, and would not have been possible with robotic craft.
I really don't buy this one. Robotic craft are more patient, more verasatile, more thorough, and far more clear-sighted and functional than any human observer. Essentially all of the scientifically meaningful terristrial observation has been done by automated systems, not humans. The only exception is the (admittedly spectacular) photography produced by the shuttle astronaouts, which have plenty of artistic, but little scientific merit. Even that could have been done (and possibly done better) by a satellite, if we really wanted to do it.
We've given people something to hope for. Sure, robotic missions are great and they bring us loads of scientific data at no human risk, but they lack something that the human imagination needs. No robotic explorer will ever overshadow Neil Armstrong first setting his foot down on a foreign body in space. Who cares about the Russian Luna and American Surveyor probes after that? The world's attention was focused on space because that was a human being out there.
But that's my point! There's no glory or triumph of the human spirit in the space station at all! It will capture the imagination of a few literate geeks for all of about 5 minutes. It's boldly going where dozens of people have gone before. Exactly how much attention gets paid to the latest shuttle launch? Compare that with the astonishing coverage of Sojourner's trip to Mars on the web and in the media, or the power of the single image the (unmanned) Hubble produced of the Eagle Nebula. Multiply that by the ISS's budget and you would have some real human excitement. Sure, give me a trip to Mars and you'll see some Armstrong-era excitement, but the ISS is one giant leap for a man, and one small step for mankind, and everybody knows it. It will be good for a few weeks of media excitement, and then will fade into the background as the shuttles do now.
The missions you list are indeed in various planning stages, but that doesn't alter the fact that much, much more could be done if NASA's planetary exploration had access to the kind of money the ISS is getting stuffed with. It also doesn't change the fact that after a couple of failures caused by the minimal Mars budget, that entire program has been delayed even further.
As for your point about the Venus probe, the costs of lifting such a probe out of Earth's gravity well pale in comparison to the cost of the ISS. The ISS will never pay itself back as a construction platform. To begin with, it is totally unsuited for construction work. All of the costs of manufacturing a probe on earth would be increased by (literally) orders of magnitude if that construction were done aboard the space station. Moreover, unless you're proposing asteroid mining (itself prohibitively expensive), nothing is being saved- you still have to lift the raw materials out of Earth's gravity well, and that cost only gets larger if you do it in several trips. The ISS saves you absolutely nothing in this regard.
Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of the space program in general terms.
The ISS is a huge waste of time, money, and national effort. After 3 decades of going in circles (literally) around the earth, the latest, greatest thing in space travel involves... going in more circles around the earth. The habitat is slightly larger, which I'm sure makes the astronauts very happy, and it's a nice, warm and fuzzy internationally cooperative project, but the fact is that it has no point, no purpose or meaning, from a scientific or even a human standpoint.
Everything that we could learn by going in circles, we have learned. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Soyuz, Mir, the Space Shuttle, and so on ad infinitum. Dozens of humans have orbited the earth thousands of times and spent countless man-hours on hundreds of projects and experiments, for decidedly marginal benefit. Early on, sure, we learned a lot, but the benefits have fallen off dramatically. Can you name one substantial scientific benefit gained in the last 10 years of manned space flight? The last 20? No fair citing something itself only relevant to space flight. No serious scientist argues that there will be more than marginal scientific benefit to the ISS, and most of what benefit there is could be realized by the Space Shuttle more cheaply.
Whereas many people see the glory of yet another semi-permanent human habitat in space, I see all the fleets of the Sojourners and Mars Rovers and planetary exploration robots (and perhaps manned flights) that could have been paid for with the billions being spent on this pointless propaganda piece. That one tiny battery-powered rover, the Sojourner, produced more meaningful science, and probably inspired more future scientists with the thrill of discovery, than 10 years of the Space Shuttle trips which the ISS is merely and elaboration of. And yet, NASA's Mars program is being substantially curtailed from its' already very limited budget, while billions of dollars are poured down the bottomless ISS pit.
The solar system is a spectacularly fascinating place. Any planetary scientist or astronomer could name a dozen extremely worthwhile space exploration projects that aren't getting worked on. How about taking a close look at Pluto, which we still know almost nothing about? How about a closer look at Europa, an excellent candidate for the presence of life? How about trying to land a probe on Venus capable of surviving more than a few hours?
With all of this astonishing diversity, and all of this incredible discovery waiting to happen, we are spending our time, energy, and money exploring the most throughoughly explored and utterly dull part of space- the part of it only a hundred miles above our heads.
For more info, I heartily reccomend Robert Park's excellent book, Voodoo Science.
To my knowledge, no, at least not technically. PovRay is supposed to be in the midst of a C++ rewrite, but no public activity as yet. On the other hand, one could argue that ray-tracers written in non-OO languages are still essentially OO, with a variety of unpleasant hacks to make them act OO. Still, writing one without those hacks would be nice.
Ray-tracing is something of a hobby of mine, and with any luck I will have just such a project open for business on SourceForge within a few months. We'll see if I'm motivated enough to get it moving.
Enforced, that is. Not real ones, anyway. The world of computing is littered with dead or undead standards "enforced" by government fiat, corporate white papers, or other forms of "enforcement." The fact is that true standards, like TCP/IP, exist as standards because they work, and it is in the interests of all concerned to comply with them.
If I build a packet of random data and toss it out onto my network, the TCP/IP police won't come and get me for failing to comply with the standards. Similarly, if I connect to an FTP server and start trying to talk to it in english, no jack-booted IETF thugs will show up at my door. On the other hand, my packet will get tossed out as soon as it reaches a router, and the FTP server just isn't going to send me the file I keep asking it for. I comply with the TCP/IP and FTP standards because it is in my interests to do so. Otherwise, things don't work.
Note that this requires a key distinction be made between a standard and a specification. A specification is what passes through the comittee and gets written up in a white paper. A standard is what people actually use. People violate specifications all the time, and the world continues to turn, so long as there is a standard. Most internet standards were standard long before they were specified by the IETF, for example the mapping from port names to services. On the other hand, there is HTML. There is no HTML standard. There are plenty of specifications, of course, but no standard, which is why being a web designer is such a nightmarish job.
From your question, however, I get the impression that a specification, not a standard, is what you are creating. Honestly, the only thing you can do is make sure your specification is so good that it is adopted as a standard, a process which can only take place voluntarily. Quality is the only real determinant of whether a specification becomes a standard, and no amount of enforcement can save a specification that people don't want to follow.