I would agree with you here, but RMS is not unsung enough. GNU has its own Slashdot category, and while ESR certainly toots his own horn a lot more than RMS--however I'd rather find someone who has done a few projects or something that are very significant but that person is not well known outside his own circle, or better, has no circle at all. RMS has gotton quite a few awards and an honorary doctorate. This award is not for him.
I saw an article in the paper that LinuxOne is expanding to Taiwan--apparantly an international presence is more important than a product. Go away! Just because you have Linux in your name doesn't mean we need you! There are actually a number of companies in Taiwan that ship Linux products, there are several LUGs here... Even Tatung seems to have a Linux division, my local computer store near Chung Yo has a big section with lots of Chinese manuals and Linux Mandrake and Caldera and Red Hat + CLE and SUSE and Debian... Lots of stuff from Linpus (good Taiwanese trademark) up in Taipei. There are also lots of domain names with *linux*.tw, many universities have a freebsd or linux subdomain and there are lots of mirrors of gnu, Linux, etc. here. Plus the Linux counter has hundreds of Taiwan residents. It's nice to finally see Linux having a visible presence in Taiwan, even in the Real World. So Linuxone's planned "expansion" doesn't exactly thrill me.
That's because your "ramen" is only a cheap imitation of the one true "Pao Mien"! Here in Taiwan I could live forever off of Prince Noodles and President Imperial Big Meals. Well, pao mien AND man tou...
Free software (or "open source" if you must) definitely should be indemnified from negligence, even the most extreme negligence. It is "as is", and also licensed free of charge. True free software is NEVER sold or licensed for a charge! Only the medium, or representation, is sold. That may be warrantied, and may even be required to have a minimal warranty by law when sold, because the medium is not generally offered "as is" since until it is purchased one cannot ascertain whether it is any good.
Knowingly selling a bad medium would of course be fraud, and intentional defects likewise might not be indemnable (word?). For instance, an INTENTIONAL backdoor in login, or an intentional time-bomb in a life-support program or something of that nature definitely could certainly be grounds for redress, even criminal redress. But equally severe flaws that cannot be shown to be intentional should not cause liability to the author of free software, because it is the users choice to judge the quality, and he doesn't have to pay a cent, and he has full access to the source code.
Proprietary software is a different case. You pay for a license for the code. Therefore there are certain expectations, as the user has virtually no means of divining the quality or discovering bugs until he encounters them, or discovering security problems until a breach happens. Microsoft is SELLING LICENSES to software for certain functions--it SELLS LICENSES for OPERATING SYSTEMS--so if the operating system fails due to extreme negligence, it is not doing its job.
The sticky question is whether this is grounds for litigation or legislation. In the case of Melissa, I would say No. I thoroughly agree, the macro mechanism and defaults in Windows is terribly bad design. In fact, the problem is far more fundamental than that--Windows has a poor, even non-existent security model. The buyer knows this, or can know this. The buyer can know about the macros and the defaults, and the potential for abuse in the form of viruses and trojans. Therefore, this is not a case of negligence so much as a case of bad design, and even terrible design, when manifest as it is in Windows, is not grounds for suit. If anything would be, it would be something more like the exploit of the week with Explorer or Frontpage or the like... Certainly the Hotmail hole stands out, though that's not exactly the same issue. In any event, I would be hesistant as to what I would ask Uncle Sam to intervene in.
Pardon the bad English, I've got that post-holiday lethargy...
A chess solution may be possible if you consider that most algorithms aimed at this problem are only going to consider reasonable moves and plausible board positions. Kind of like "guided" brute force.
Checkers on the other hand, - I've read somewhere that there are over 10^120 plausible board positions: orders of magnitude greater than the estimated number of particles in the universe ; )
Huh? Checkers has far fewer board positions--There are only 32 usable squares and 12 identical pieces per side, as opposed to the 64 squares of chess with 16 pieces per side with many different functions. Someone computed that there are ~5e20, or ~2^69 legal checkers positions, however many of those are unobtainable by legal play. This is a vast number even for a computer, however it is certainly possible that checkers will be solved in the near future. I'm not sure if an alpha-beta search is applicable to solutions of a game, but if it is, that would cut the workload down to ~2^35 positions, which seems almost piddling...
Chess, on the other hand, has an astronomical number of positions and will never be solved by brute-forcing with conventional computers. Should quantum computation ever become a reality that may change.
Of course this problem is many many magnitudes easier than solving chess, though still not quite pocket-calculator material.
I agree. Much as I deplore frivolous litigation, maybe this would be a good time for Linus to invoke his trademark to clear out some of the squatters. Him, or that Swedish detergent company...
EXCUSE me? Dishonest? I believe this was INTENDED! It still doesn't prevent people from redistributing the source after they buy it. Of course you can "make money off the GPL".
Please be aware that trust (who is going to authenticate all those secure servers) and implementations (who is maintaining those "secure" web servers, and what software are they running) are two really big security issues, algorithm and key-size are not as big. Adding key length will not improve security after a point.
But you should note, a 128 bit RSA key can be cracked in no time. A better idea is 128-bit or longer conventional encryption keys, and 2048 bit or longer RSA keys (I would say 1024 bit, but recent factoring successes with 512-bit keys are making that number look a bit less secure, as 768-bit keys already are getting feasible to crack.)
Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. I call the Linux kernel "Linux", acknowledging Linus's role in creating and naming the kernel. I don't call Linux+gcc+Emacs+bash+fileutils+shellutils+X etc. Linux, b/c I think GNU/Linux is a more appropriate name. You can call Linux+gcc+Emacs+bash+fileutils+shellutils+X etc. "Linux" if you want. Linus is a great man, but even he only wrote a fraction of the Linux code, and Linux is only a fraction of an operating system. I call the kernel "Linux" respecting Linus and his role. I call the operating system GNU/Linux respecting both Linus and his role, the role of the Linux developers, and the role of the GNU developers, as well as RMS. After all, the last time I looked, I didn't see RMS co-opting asking everyone to ditch Linux altogether and call it "Stallmix". I happen to believe that RMS is every bit as humble as Linus, just more ideological (and I think he has a perfect basis for that ideology). You choose the nomenclature that suits you, but don't attack me for using nomenclature that I feel is more appropriate AND inclusive. Thank you.
Nate
P.S. GNU/Linux does not include or refer to BSDish systems. GNU/Linux means an operating system based upon the Linux kernel and GNU system applications and utilities, as well as other software. You could say, GNU/FreeBSD, GNU/NetBSD, GNU/BSD, etc, however, the role of the GNU project is generally smaller (though still ubiquitous) in BSDish systems, though most at least have gcc.
I believe America's current policy is that is has claimed no land, reserves the right to do so, and does not recognize any other countries' claims there.
I also believe there are environmental treaties restricting how Antartica can be exploited, not sure right off the top of my head.
Right now there are a bunch of bases there, basically just research, and a handful of permanent ones, from a few countries. I'm not aware of any actual territorial claims.
Okay, I guess I've never posted this high up in the Slashdot reply chain before.
I didn't mean (despite my opinionated closing line, I think it was a valid opinion to express) start a flame war or attack Photogenic's licensing scheme, nor did I intend to insult Frank Brockway. All I meant was:
Photogenics is not competition on par with Photoshop (I've never heard of it before, and I think it's safe to say that Adobe's radar people aren't too concerned)
Photogenics is not competition on par with the Gimp, because the Gimp's attraction is that it is free software/open-source software (there, a painful attempt to use ecumenical nomenclature).
I realize that the idea is that it is now probably the only other image-manipulation program of this level of sophistication for Linux, however, I do not see it as competing with the Gimp. At least, the competition would/should be rather one-way.
Maybe if you define competition as "another hefty image-manipution app for Linux."
But Photogenics is no more competition to Photoshop than the Gimp is. So why should Photogenics, just another proprietary program, be competition to the Gimp, unless you are loath to use another operating system? Are you exclusively using GNU/Linux because you hate Microsoft or you covet its power, or are you exclusively using it because for more idealistic reasons? If so, Photogenics is not competition, regardless if it *was* better than Photoshop. If I want proprietary software, I'll be happy to use a proprietary operating system.
I don't give a rip if FooSoft port FooWare Pro to GNU/Linux---if they don't share the source.
I live in Taichung, and I can say that it was easily the worst earthquake I will ever experience (though I lived in Hualien for over two years and got quakes/tremors every few weeks). There have been many aftershocks, I believe at least three > 6.0. Just last night there was a big tremor, which turned out to be a 5.0 in Hualien. That was the first in several days. Ordinarily, it is quite rare for there to be a noticeable tremor in Taichung. There are still people camping on the streets, and many residential areas are swelled with people in from the apartments. Taiwan is an affluent nation, though not everyone is affluent (some less so now than before 921), and it is the poor people living in inaccessible mountain villages that got it the worst. I've been to Tung Shih/Dong Shr, one of the worst-hit cities, and the skyline is just ravaged coming into the city; buildings toppled, reduced to ruins, whole rows of houses with first floors fallen in and a floor lower, huge buildings leaning at 45 degree angles, intact car hoods sticking out from under, the rest squashed to 3 inches like a soda can, etc. Taiwan has always been very resilient. For those of you worried about your RAM prices (shame on you!) it's expected that Taiwan's semiconductor production will be normal six months. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the superficial damage of the earthquake was covered up in three years (obviously not everything, a mountain near Sun Moon Lake got it's peak remodeled for instance), but for many individuals, it will be with them all their lives. Taiwan's biggest problem now is not funding (from what I can see), it is the kind of personal problems that individuals have and the work that people need to do. If you do want to donate to quake victims, you could see your local church (most churches, particularly denominational ones, will accept relief funds, how they dispense them is up to each one), or donate via ICRT at www.icrt.com.tw (not sure how they use it) or via Morrison Academy www.mca.tc.edu.tw (they use the money to help out individuals in need, send teams with supplies to personally deliver, etc.). Nate
What's the next step? When we purchase our genetically engineered offspring, maybe they'll sneak in code to make THEM infertile. After all, they don't want to put themselves out of business do they? Of course the logical conclusion is a society of infertile clones depending on the "engineers" to sustain life, a la E. R. Burrough's reptilian society in his "At the Earth's Core" series.
Good post and agreed, BUT---if you use the BSD license, strike out the obnoxious advertising clause (clause 3), which has the consequence that it "contaminates" derivatory works in a way that not even the GPL does (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html) Well, actually UC-Berkeley has actually revoked that clause for all UC-B licensed software, but much legacy BSD-licensed software does not. Personally, I prefer the GPL because it basically nullifies the damage of copyright where copyright exists, whereas BSD does almost nothing to prevent others from using copyright greedily.
>Well if I'm getting bullet implants, I better >have full control over whether or not it goes >in, when it comes out, and what goes in it.;^)
Good! And believe it or not, last time I checked there was no law in the books saying that you must submit to being shot by gun-owners, and last time I checked, if you do get shot by a gun-owner, assuming it wasn't self-defense, that gun-owner is in deep doodoo.
Whereas the implants you want all gun-owners to submit to would be required by law.
Or better yet, how about we use guns to shoot people who *have* implants? (Assimilate THIS!) Seriously, while I do find cybernetics fascinating, in the hands of people with this mindset, it is extremely dangerous. *Requiring* implants of any kind is a fascist, dangerous thing that no dignified human should accept. If I'm getting an electronic implant, I better have full control over whether or not it goes in, when it comes out, and what goes in it. Nate Kudos to cryptwhomp
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree with you here, but RMS is not unsung enough. GNU has its own Slashdot category, and while ESR certainly toots his own horn a lot more than RMS--however I'd rather find someone who has done a few projects or something that are very significant but that person is not well known outside his own circle, or better, has no circle at all. RMS has gotton quite a few awards and an honorary doctorate. This award is not for him.
And now I've got some great new quotes for signatures! Not that I've ever used signatures, but if I ever do, I've got some quotes:
"Fortunately, I'm a Sagittarius and Sagittarius' don't believe in astrology." (So am I.)
"I think all patents are bad... Unless they are mine."
What will they insert their slimy little digits into next?
Nate
Power, water, phone, internet, Win95 (ugh!), GNU/Linux, all working.... Watched the count-down on TV, that was fine... Will post more later.
Nate
Knowingly selling a bad medium would of course be fraud, and intentional defects likewise might not be indemnable (word?). For instance, an INTENTIONAL backdoor in login, or an intentional time-bomb in a life-support program or something of that nature definitely could certainly be grounds for redress, even criminal redress. But equally severe flaws that cannot be shown to be intentional should not cause liability to the author of free software, because it is the users choice to judge the quality, and he doesn't have to pay a cent, and he has full access to the source code.
Proprietary software is a different case. You pay for a license for the code. Therefore there are certain expectations, as the user has virtually no means of divining the quality or discovering bugs until he encounters them, or discovering security problems until a breach happens. Microsoft is SELLING LICENSES to software for certain functions--it SELLS LICENSES for OPERATING SYSTEMS--so if the operating system fails due to extreme negligence, it is not doing its job.
The sticky question is whether this is grounds for litigation or legislation. In the case of Melissa, I would say No. I thoroughly agree, the macro mechanism and defaults in Windows is terribly bad design. In fact, the problem is far more fundamental than that--Windows has a poor, even non-existent security model. The buyer knows this, or can know this. The buyer can know about the macros and the defaults, and the potential for abuse in the form of viruses and trojans. Therefore, this is not a case of negligence so much as a case of bad design, and even terrible design, when manifest as it is in Windows, is not grounds for suit. If anything would be, it would be something more like the exploit of the week with Explorer or Frontpage or the like... Certainly the Hotmail hole stands out, though that's not exactly the same issue. In any event, I would be hesistant as to what I would ask Uncle Sam to intervene in.
Pardon the bad English, I've got that post-holiday lethargy...
Nate
Checkers on the other hand, - I've read somewhere that there are over 10^120 plausible board positions: orders of magnitude greater than the estimated number of particles in the universe ; )
Huh? Checkers has far fewer board positions--There are only 32 usable squares and 12 identical pieces per side, as opposed to the 64 squares of chess with 16 pieces per side with many different functions. Someone computed that there are ~5e20, or ~2^69 legal checkers positions, however many of those are unobtainable by legal play. This is a vast number even for a computer, however it is certainly possible that checkers will be solved in the near future. I'm not sure if an alpha-beta search is applicable to solutions of a game, but if it is, that would cut the workload down to ~2^35 positions, which seems almost piddling...
Chess, on the other hand, has an astronomical number of positions and will never be solved by brute-forcing with conventional computers. Should quantum computation ever become a reality that may change.
Of course this problem is many many magnitudes easier than solving chess, though still not quite pocket-calculator material.
Nate
I agree. Much as I deplore frivolous litigation, maybe this would be a good time for Linus to invoke his trademark to clear out some of the squatters. Him, or that Swedish detergent company...
EXCUSE me? Dishonest? I believe this was INTENDED! It still doesn't prevent people from redistributing the source after they buy it. Of course you can "make money off the GPL".
But you should note, a 128 bit RSA key can be cracked in no time. A better idea is 128-bit or longer conventional encryption keys, and 2048 bit or longer RSA keys (I would say 1024 bit, but recent factoring successes with 512-bit keys are making that number look a bit less secure, as 768-bit keys already are getting feasible to crack.)
Nate
OF COURSE the companies will please the spooks.
In any event, if you really want to prevent tapping, you MUST encrypt. End of story. The standards are there, the software is there, use it.
Nate
Nate
P.S. GNU/Linux does not include or refer to BSDish systems. GNU/Linux means an operating system based upon the Linux kernel and GNU system applications and utilities, as well as other software. You could say, GNU/FreeBSD, GNU/NetBSD, GNU/BSD, etc, however, the role of the GNU project is generally smaller (though still ubiquitous) in BSDish systems, though most at least have gcc.
Nate
Still a dumb letter without a leg to stand on.
I also believe there are environmental treaties restricting how Antartica can be exploited, not sure right off the top of my head.
Right now there are a bunch of bases there, basically just research, and a handful of permanent ones, from a few countries. I'm not aware of any actual territorial claims.
I didn't mean (despite my opinionated closing line, I think it was a valid opinion to express) start a flame war or attack Photogenic's licensing scheme, nor did I intend to insult Frank Brockway. All I meant was:
- Photogenics is not competition on par with Photoshop (I've never heard of it before, and I think it's safe to say that Adobe's radar people aren't too concerned)
- Photogenics is not competition on par with the Gimp, because the Gimp's attraction is that it is free software/open-source software (there, a painful attempt to use ecumenical nomenclature).
I realize that the idea is that it is now probably the only other image-manipulation program of this level of sophistication for Linux, however, I do not see it as competing with the Gimp. At least, the competition would/should be rather one-way.Thank you.
But Photogenics is no more competition to Photoshop than the Gimp is. So why should Photogenics, just another proprietary program, be competition to the Gimp, unless you are loath to use another operating system? Are you exclusively using GNU/Linux because you hate Microsoft or you covet its power, or are you exclusively using it because for more idealistic reasons? If so, Photogenics is not competition, regardless if it *was* better than Photoshop. If I want proprietary software, I'll be happy to use a proprietary operating system.
I don't give a rip if FooSoft port FooWare Pro to GNU/Linux---if they don't share the source.
I live in Taichung, and I can say that it was easily the worst earthquake I will ever experience (though I lived in Hualien for over two years and got quakes/tremors every few weeks). There have been many aftershocks, I believe at least three > 6.0. Just last night there was a big tremor, which turned out to be a 5.0 in Hualien. That was the first in several days. Ordinarily, it is quite rare for there to be a noticeable tremor in Taichung. There are still people camping on the streets, and many residential areas are swelled with people in from the apartments. Taiwan is an affluent nation, though not everyone is affluent (some less so now than before 921), and it is the poor people living in inaccessible mountain villages that got it the worst. I've been to Tung Shih/Dong Shr, one of the worst-hit cities, and the skyline is just ravaged coming into the city; buildings toppled, reduced to ruins, whole rows of houses with first floors fallen in and a floor lower, huge buildings leaning at 45 degree angles, intact car hoods sticking out from under, the rest squashed to 3 inches like a soda can, etc. Taiwan has always been very resilient. For those of you worried about your RAM prices (shame on you!) it's expected that Taiwan's semiconductor production will be normal six months. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the superficial damage of the earthquake was covered up in three years (obviously not everything, a mountain near Sun Moon Lake got it's peak remodeled for instance), but for many individuals, it will be with them all their lives. Taiwan's biggest problem now is not funding (from what I can see), it is the kind of personal problems that individuals have and the work that people need to do. If you do want to donate to quake victims, you could see your local church (most churches, particularly denominational ones, will accept relief funds, how they dispense them is up to each one), or donate via ICRT at www.icrt.com.tw (not sure how they use it) or via Morrison Academy www.mca.tc.edu.tw (they use the money to help out individuals in need, send teams with supplies to personally deliver, etc.). Nate
Farfetched? Today, maybe...
Good post and agreed, BUT---if you use the BSD license, strike out the obnoxious advertising clause (clause 3), which has the consequence that it "contaminates" derivatory works in a way that not even the GPL does (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html) Well, actually UC-Berkeley has actually revoked that clause for all UC-B licensed software, but much legacy BSD-licensed software does not. Personally, I prefer the GPL because it basically nullifies the damage of copyright where copyright exists, whereas BSD does almost nothing to prevent others from using copyright greedily.
>Well if I'm getting bullet implants, I better ;^)
>have full control over whether or not it goes
>in, when it comes out, and what goes in it.
Good! And believe it or not, last time I checked there was no law in the books saying that you must submit to being shot by gun-owners, and last time I checked, if you do get shot by a gun-owner, assuming it wasn't self-defense, that gun-owner is in deep doodoo.
Whereas the implants you want all gun-owners to submit to would be required by law.
>If you don't want an implant, don't get a gun.
I agree with the other reply to this remark.
Nate
Or better yet, how about we use guns to shoot people who *have* implants? (Assimilate THIS!) Seriously, while I do find cybernetics fascinating, in the hands of people with this mindset, it is extremely dangerous. *Requiring* implants of any kind is a fascist, dangerous thing that no dignified human should accept. If I'm getting an electronic implant, I better have full control over whether or not it goes in, when it comes out, and what goes in it. Nate Kudos to cryptwhomp