Google has become the search engine of choice for millions of people, and introduced a lot of great products like Gmail and Earth. These are excellent and have proven that Google is a dynamic company that has been successful in harnessing user-centric technologies, but they need to do more to stay on top. Already, search engine companies in the East are gathering their might.
One idea would be for Google to architect transparent wireless portals, which is what a Slashdot article hinted at a while back. If they had a wireless platform with which to utilize their current technologies for streaming 24/7 advertisement deliverables, they could maintain their position as the Kingpin of the information world.
I work in the Aerospace industry as well, just under 4 years of experience, and make $110,000 (Canadian) or US$92,000, doing user interface design (Java/Swing). Admittedly this is up from when I was fresh out of college, but I was still making a lot more than $50,000...
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel. That is unforgivable. Disasters have happened all over the world this year - in Portugal and Romania, fire and flooding respecitvely. The people from other countries in Europe, and the governments of those countries, helped the victims. Spanish and French rescue efforts were underway very quickly when the fires in Portugal were blazing - yet in the USA, help was very slow coming from the US itself, and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why? What the hell? What the hell is going on with Bush?
Don't criticise Slashdot readers for criticising Bush - they are quite right to. Slashdot's audience, being geeks, are generally more intelligent and well-informed than the average US consumer: Think about it - could there possibly be a reason why so many Slashdotters are criticising Bush? I'll leave you to ponder it.
If Microsoft, the MPAA, and other corporations don't want their systems hacked, they must make sure that there is a way to play the content on alternative systems easily. Vendor lock in is not acceptable and the people have spoken. Linux (and other non-MS OS) users should not be forced to run Windows to play DVDs or ASFs or whatever. That is all.
I doubt that the American public is impressed with what the current Canadian legislative and judicial systems either.
True, and rightly so - the Canadian system has a lot of problems of its own, there's no denying that. But I don't consider the Canada's problems in that regard (or in fact my views on Western separatism) and the issue being discussed to be linked - Canada is still a better place to be in terms of personal freedom than the US is at the moment.
Do you think something like that would be likely to fly in Canada? I'm not trying to put down the American public at all. I'm just trying to wake people who don't see a problem with the way things are in the US at the moment up - because sooner or later people are going to take things like this for granted and the US won't be the great and free nation it started out as, but just a warmongering police state where personal liberty is a joke. And that will be a great pity.
No, don't get me wrong at all. The vast majority of Americans are great people. I love the way Americans in general tend to be straightfoward, honest and down to earth people, and I feel that in particular, Western Canadians and Western Americans have a great deal in common. It's the legal system and current movement to create a police state that worries and frightens me - all the more because so many good Americans are being effected.
That way, there would be no competition at all, and Intel's prices could leap upward, unbridled.
What AMD should really do is relocate to Canada. That way they'll get the benefits of cheaper operating costs yet retain the benefits of the North American market thanks to NAFTA.
Here in Kelowna, British Columbia, a co-worker of mine found out about this via an email sent by his relatives in the US who knew about the case, and we discussed it for quite a while at work.
The general consensus is that the authorities in the US have become too strict, especially with "intellectual property", "the war on drugs", and "computer crimes".
They are basically making themselves a laughing stock internationally - the Canadian public doesn't seem impressed by what the current US adminsitration is doing, or how they are handling these issues.
Things like this would not happen in any other industrial, civilized G7 democracy, like Canada for example.
It's quite shocking that the authorities are punishing students for using passwords - that they were given!
Yes, and humans are also 3% genetically similar to bananas. So we are 96% chimps, and 3% bananas. Or more scientifically, humans are 99% chimps and bananas. This combination can only lead to the conclusion that the intelligent designer is none other than Mojo Jojo.
In WinZip's defense, it has long been a staple of the desktop world - yes, there are freeware and open source equivalents that do the same job and are freer, but WinZip has a few things going for it that those products don't:
It's easy to use: The free zip programs included in Windows, although they are easy enough for most users, just don't feel right - and you can't really expect grandma to use open source utilities or to find other Windows freeware zip progams, however easy you might find it personally.
People are familiar with it: It's been around for a long time and has become ubiquitous - from standard end-users to IT professionals, there are very few computer users who haven't had experience with WinZip and don't know how to use it.
It works well all of the time: People seem to have less difficulties with WinZip than with other archivers, and while this may just be due to familiarity or other reasons, the amount of people who recommend WinZip for everyday use is very telling.
They shouldn't have used a Slashdot article as an advertisement platform, that's true - after all, that's what ad space is for... but to bash the product itself is a bit much, in my opinion.
Microsoft can only push consumers so far. If their DRM technology is too anti-social they will find that their systems will be rejected on an ever increasing scale.
Consumers may be sheep, but even sheep can be pushed too far and become dangerous to the handler. Living in a rural area, I've seen that for myself. The same thing applies to people who Microsoft are attempting to push their DRM on. It can only go so far.
What's wrong with the Canadian gun control system?
There are tons of things wrong with it, unfortunately. The main things wrong with it being the budget problem (something to the tune of $2-billion dollars over budget), the fact that it doesn't look like it will ever stop draining resources, and the fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have admitted that it is still impossible to track where weapons used for crimes came from (that is, whether they were smuggled in from the US or whether they were stolen from or used by registered gun owners). So the system seems to be, in short, a useless waste of taxpayer money.
Are more people being shot, or victimized by criminals?
Unfortunately, yes. Canada's murder rate is up 12% and violent crime has increased by a whopping 39% since the more restrictive gun laws came into effect.
So what you're saying is that they are only going after the name itself, and not the related images, text, figuroos, etc? That would be easy enough to solve by just taking "Linux" out of the names of the products, as you suggest. But if they start digging deeper and going for "Linux-related" stuff as well, things could get messier.
The best thing all-round would be a rework of the system, to something like this: Have a list of copyrighted and trademarked products, like
These are all of the plushies that (x) produce (endorsed by us). If you want to produce competing plush toys, (like the Linux penguin etc), you will need to pay $xxx.xxx
...and so on.
Otherwise, it really is just a slippery slope and up to lawyerly interpretation - they will end up doing whatever they want and exacting vast tribute.
What is really scary to me is that there is this kneejerk reaction that if an organization does anything at all to protect "intellectual property" -- a horrid term but one that I think actually does apply to trademarks because someone else using your trademarks can lessen the value of them -- it is some slippery slope from there to fiendish machinations and demands for royalties.
The problem is that the various laws that make up "Intellectual property" as you call it, were conceived to protect people owning this property from exploitation and to protect the integrity of their works. That ideal is a good one, but it has slowly vanished, and today's intellectual property laws are geared towards milking the public and making as much money for already moneyed corporations as possible. The people getting burned now are individuals as well as small and medium sized businesses - long the staple of the middle and upper-middle classes. Unless a complete reform of these IP laws takes place, or they are abolished completely, I will always view organizations proposing things like this with the utmost suspicion.
Can you, in all honesty, say for certain that the LMI will not use the massive amounts of laws and regulations surrounding "Intellectual property" to manipulate and control the Linux computing world, and in doing injure the reputation and the progress of the free and open source software world? Personally, I have my doubts.
The reason everyone thinks this is uncharacteristic of Linus is that they think of him as the open source hero the media has made him out to be, an accessible version of RMS.
No, that's not the reason I find it uncharacteristic of him. I find it uncharacteristic of him because I thought he had more common sense than to go along with something like this - it is a slippery slope.
Linus was likely advised by a lawyer that he trusts that this is a good idea, so he's doing it. Many in the free software movement might reject a move like this on ideological grounds, but Linus' never really demonstrated that he holds tightly to any ideologies, so there's no reason to expect it from him.
I understand what you're saying here, but I still maintain that it's a sad state of affairs when the legal system becomes so complex and overpowering that people are either forced to be squashed and milked by it, while others profit from it in the most slimy ways imaginable. This isn't limited to inviduals or businesses - businesses (usually smaller to medium sized businesses) get burned by these tactics. It's a screwed up system and we are unfortunate to be living in such an unfree society. Soon there will be so many laws and regulations that everyone in North America will either be a criminal or face the possibility of being sued for remembering song lyrics or using a name they shouldn't have. (Get that sticker off your bumper or pay the $200 license fee to LMI !) Think I'm exagerrating? Maybe. It's not that bad yet, but how bad it will get is definitely not clear.
As for information wants to be free, I'm ambivalent about that - I prefer the public domain mentality - free software should be public domain and you can do whatever you want with it. Yes, including redistributing modified binaries. I'm also a supporter of abolishing "IP" law. If you want to copy something, you should be able to copy it. People survived for centuries before Britney Spears and Windows XP were household names, and there is no way you will ever be able to convince me that they should be continuously paid for $0 copies of data or sound.
Then again, that's just my opinion and I'm just a loony libertarian. Take it or leave it:)
What you say makes sense, and obviously if that's all there is to it that's fine and well.
What I'm concerned about is that the trademark law could be wangled into allowing the LMI to manipulate and dominate the Linux computing world, and injure Linux and the Free/Open source movement in general by giving it a bad rep and creating animosity between the LMI and companies building their products with or on top of Linux.
Of course it would be nice not to blame Linus or the lawyers involved or anything like that, and I don't necessarily have a problem with Linus or any individual lawyers, but unfortunately in this day and age, especially in North America, legal issues have spiraled out of control, and whenever lawyers get involved, it's usually about extracting money from someone or some entity. I don't want to sound dramatic, but this isn't a free society from that point of view anymore, and there are too many laws and regulations which can be manipulated by top dogs and their lawyers - and this is why I am concerned whenever I read about organizations like these whose sole purpose seems to be milking business by using the legal system.
What about systems, though? Let's draw up a scenario so that we're both on the same page. Company XYZ is a computer vendor, the CEO, Miss F, has decided that the company should take the Linux route since she has experienced Linux as being a very reliable and powerful system. The company produces Linux servers and desktops, and advertises them as such.
Does Miss F get a letter from LMI demanding a license fee for each system her company sells, or some sort of global sublicensing fee? (The LMI states that for-profit companies will be charged according to profit, but they don't state whether that's total corporate profit or whether different divisions will be treated differently - ie, will each license or sublicense be charged according to a certain bracket?
In 5 years' time, will the LMI be extracting vast tribute from Linux vendors, and blackmailing them a-la Microsoft?
LMI: You are free to install FreeBSD on your systems, vendor and customer, but you will then be charged more for Linux licenses, or, depending on how far you push FreeBSD, you will not be allowed to sell systems containing our trademarked "Linux" text, graphics, terms and figuroos systems any longer.
I understand where you're coming from, but where do you draw the line?
If a company advertises custom-built Linux firewalls / intranet servers / or whatever and uses Linux logos and graphics, is that not acceptable?
Yet Linux distributions often use these trademarked terms and figuroos without any legal action taken against them.
if it's only about companies using the terms and figuroos for things which clearly are not Linux-based or have anything to do with Linux, perhaps it's more understandable, but how many companies do you suppose are doing that?
I don't really understand this latest spat of legal attacks - it seems very uncharacteristic of Linus. It looks like the LMI is just trying to cash in on the Linux name, despite people having used it commercially and non-commercially for years without paying these license fees. It just seems a bit odd to me.
Free to use it, but only if Linus Torvalds approves. I know I'll be moderated down for this, but it needs to be said.
Is it just me, or is FreeBSD is starting to look pretty good right now from an ideological point of view? Pulling out lawyers is an awfully Microsoft-ish/SCO-ish thing to do.
Being from a country that is considered a hotspot for spam, I naturally appreciate any effort to eradicate spam, BUT blacklists take things too far. They don't seem very effective and only serve to irritate and inconvenience people who have done nothing wrong and are using their IPs for only legitimate purposes.
This especially effects smaller ISPs and hosting providers, who get slammed despite in al ot of cases being able to prove that no spam was originating from their network and that htey have secure servers. These blacklist operators have automated systems checking the "vulnerability" of networks and adding IPs willy-nilly. This has a negligible effect on actual spammers, since they will just hop to another network when a network they are using gets blacklisted. It's almost like the gun control system in Canada, only worse since it is automated in addition to being highly inaccurate and ineffective. This new system smells too much like a hyped-up, buzzword-added blacklist for my liking.
I know that GM has gotten a lot of flak over the years about not being as reliable as Japanese cars, but I have had the exact opposite experience. My last car was a Chevy Blazer, and it was absolutely solid. Very few problems although I drove it into the ground (driving 60 miles a day to college in awful traffic). The car I had before that was a Toyota RAV4, and man, what a piece of crap. The idling was never completely right, despite the car only being two years old when I got it, the rear tires always seemed to get slow-punctures, the head gasket blew, and the car just felt very sluggish after a year of driving.
After my bad experiences with the RAV4 and my good experiences with the Blazer I decided to stick to GM and bought a 2005 Equinox. it is absolutely solid and a very smooth ride. My girlfriend drives a VW Golf 1.9 TDI and it also seems very solid. So far I can honestly say that I prefer American, French, German, and British cars to Japanese cars, because of my own experiences and those of my friends and family - although a few still swear by Japanese cars, the majority don't, and I certainly don't. (Just an opinion, Your Mileage May Vary).
Movie pirates could always wait until the commercial DVD is released, and make rips / copies / etc from that. In fact, a while back they announced that Hollywood studios were considering releasing the movie and the DVD at the same time. if that happens, there will be no studio leak neccessary to get a "release-day rip".
Even if that doesn't happen, though, people can always wait until the DVD is out commercially or even at the local Blockbuster and make rips there. Why the rush? Personally I would rather buy the DVD, but I know that a lot of people prefer rips and downloads and copies - and there is absolutely nothing that the studios can do to stop them from doing these things, except try and widen the quality gap between the fakes and rips and their commercial DVD products.(Which will be difficult, but I don't think there is any other way, other than becoming a loss-leader, which in the MPAA's case won't be very helpful).
My experiences with data centers in Canada, the US, the UK, and South Africa so far lead me to believe that they are already pretty standardized - there may be slight differences, but all in all it's pretty amazing to see how similar data centers are when one is visiting countries that vary so greatly in other respects.
I guess that could be advice for immigrants from other countries who are in the tech industry: if you feel homesick, just spend more time in the data center - it will very likely look just like the data centers back home.
nick alistair, john garth, tom mark blitter quaylesen, rudolph ottosen drew phillip, jeffrey stove, kent mark rick garth, quayle blittersen, shawn kent colin nolanhouse, dwight yates, justin bernard nico alistair, fred fredsen, steve jeffrey quayle jason, matthew mcarnold, otto murphy tom dane, ned earpbridge,alistair john dain markbridge, dwight edward, ed blitter andrew lew, mark donovan, nolan jeffrey ned phillip, zeta xavier, tim shawnson yates mcnico, matthew mcalistair, ben stoveson murphy nick, nevin wallace, drew wallace flynn nick, dwight nicoson, walter lervis herman flynnwater, quayle donovansen rudolph frankbridge, rick lon, murphy stove roland quaylemc, john nevin, stuart baxter michael shawnmc, nicholas dennis, erasmus nicholas flynn xavier, kent gustav, rudolph mcgavin xavier dwain, frank roland, victor dwight xavier brett, mark patrick, david donovansen murphy matthew, ned earl, lon dwight quayle dean, lon nevin, patrick justin keegan nicholasbridge, dennis kevin greg wallace, patrick nicholas, drew lew jeffrey frank, murphy gustav, kyle dane aaron quentin, garth eauldman, stove stove dwain flynn, dennis lervisson, murphy rolandwater stuart nolan, steve nickhouse, bernard cade ronald mcandrew, noah nolan, dain walter keegan andrew, donald gavinsen, noah dennisbridge shawn erasmus, ned earphouse, nico sherb, rick stove, edgar ottosen, xavier don, ubert yatesson, arnold mark, dean alistair
Slashdot Mirror
Google has become the search engine of choice for millions of people, and introduced a lot of great products like Gmail and Earth. These are excellent and have proven that Google is a dynamic company that has been successful in harnessing user-centric technologies, but they need to do more to stay on top. Already, search engine companies in the East are gathering their might.
One idea would be for Google to architect transparent wireless portals, which is what a Slashdot article hinted at a while back. If they had a wireless platform with which to utilize their current technologies for streaming 24/7 advertisement deliverables, they could maintain their position as the Kingpin of the information world.
I work in the Aerospace industry as well, just under 4 years of experience, and make $110,000 (Canadian) or US$92,000, doing user interface design (Java/Swing). Admittedly this is up from when I was fresh out of college, but I was still making a lot more than $50,000 ...
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel. That is unforgivable. Disasters have happened all over the world this year - in Portugal and Romania, fire and flooding respecitvely. The people from other countries in Europe, and the governments of those countries, helped the victims. Spanish and French rescue efforts were underway very quickly when the fires in Portugal were blazing - yet in the USA, help was very slow coming from the US itself, and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why? What the hell? What the hell is going on with Bush?
Don't criticise Slashdot readers for criticising Bush - they are quite right to. Slashdot's audience, being geeks, are generally more intelligent and well-informed than the average US consumer: Think about it - could there possibly be a reason why so many Slashdotters are criticising Bush? I'll leave you to ponder it.
If Microsoft, the MPAA, and other corporations don't want their systems hacked, they must make sure that there is a way to play the content on alternative systems easily. Vendor lock in is not acceptable and the people have spoken. Linux (and other non-MS OS) users should not be forced to run Windows to play DVDs or ASFs or whatever. That is all.
They are based in Sunnyvale, California.
True, and rightly so - the Canadian system has a lot of problems of its own, there's no denying that. But I don't consider the Canada's problems in that regard (or in fact my views on Western separatism) and the issue being discussed to be linked - Canada is still a better place to be in terms of personal freedom than the US is at the moment.
This is a good example.
Do you think something like that would be likely to fly in Canada? I'm not trying to put down the American public at all. I'm just trying to wake people who don't see a problem with the way things are in the US at the moment up - because sooner or later people are going to take things like this for granted and the US won't be the great and free nation it started out as, but just a warmongering police state where personal liberty is a joke. And that will be a great pity.
No, don't get me wrong at all. The vast majority of Americans are great people. I love the way Americans in general tend to be straightfoward, honest and down to earth people, and I feel that in particular, Western Canadians and Western Americans have a great deal in common. It's the legal system and current movement to create a police state that worries and frightens me - all the more because so many good Americans are being effected.
That way, there would be no competition at all, and Intel's prices could leap upward, unbridled.
What AMD should really do is relocate to Canada. That way they'll get the benefits of cheaper operating costs yet retain the benefits of the North American market thanks to NAFTA.The general consensus is that the authorities in the US have become too strict, especially with "intellectual property", "the war on drugs", and "computer crimes".
They are basically making themselves a laughing stock internationally - the Canadian public doesn't seem impressed by what the current US adminsitration is doing, or how they are handling these issues.Things like this would not happen in any other industrial, civilized G7 democracy, like Canada for example.
It's quite shocking that the authorities are punishing students for using passwords - that they were given!Yes, and humans are also 3% genetically similar to bananas. So we are 96% chimps, and 3% bananas. Or more scientifically, humans are 99% chimps and bananas. This combination can only lead to the conclusion that the intelligent designer is none other than Mojo Jojo.
In WinZip's defense, it has long been a staple of the desktop world - yes, there are freeware and open source equivalents that do the same job and are freer, but WinZip has a few things going for it that those products don't:
It's easy to use: The free zip programs included in Windows, although they are easy enough for most users, just don't feel right - and you can't really expect grandma to use open source utilities or to find other Windows freeware zip progams, however easy you might find it personally.
People are familiar with it: It's been around for a long time and has become ubiquitous - from standard end-users to IT professionals, there are very few computer users who haven't had experience with WinZip and don't know how to use it.
It works well all of the time: People seem to have less difficulties with WinZip than with other archivers, and while this may just be due to familiarity or other reasons, the amount of people who recommend WinZip for everyday use is very telling.
They shouldn't have used a Slashdot article as an advertisement platform, that's true - after all, that's what ad space is for... but to bash the product itself is a bit much, in my opinion.
Microsoft can only push consumers so far. If their DRM technology is too anti-social they will find that their systems will be rejected on an ever increasing scale.
Consumers may be sheep, but even sheep can be pushed too far and become dangerous to the handler. Living in a rural area, I've seen that for myself. The same thing applies to people who Microsoft are attempting to push their DRM on. It can only go so far.The best thing all-round would be a rework of the system, to something like this: Have a list of copyrighted and trademarked products, like
http://figuroos.linuxmark.org/These are all of the figuroos that (x) produce (endorsed by us). If you want to produce a competing figuroo, do so, but you will have to pay $xxx.xxx.
http://plushies.linuxmark.org/These are all of the plushies that (x) produce (endorsed by us). If you want to produce competing plush toys, (like the Linux penguin etc), you will need to pay $xxx.xxx
Otherwise, it really is just a slippery slope and up to lawyerly interpretation - they will end up doing whatever they want and exacting vast tribute.
The problem is that the various laws that make up "Intellectual property" as you call it, were conceived to protect people owning this property from exploitation and to protect the integrity of their works. That ideal is a good one, but it has slowly vanished, and today's intellectual property laws are geared towards milking the public and making as much money for already moneyed corporations as possible. The people getting burned now are individuals as well as small and medium sized businesses - long the staple of the middle and upper-middle classes. Unless a complete reform of these IP laws takes place, or they are abolished completely, I will always view organizations proposing things like this with the utmost suspicion.
Can you, in all honesty, say for certain that the LMI will not use the massive amounts of laws and regulations surrounding "Intellectual property" to manipulate and control the Linux computing world, and in doing injure the reputation and the progress of the free and open source software world? Personally, I have my doubts.
No, that's not the reason I find it uncharacteristic of him. I find it uncharacteristic of him because I thought he had more common sense than to go along with something like this - it is a slippery slope.
I understand what you're saying here, but I still maintain that it's a sad state of affairs when the legal system becomes so complex and overpowering that people are either forced to be squashed and milked by it, while others profit from it in the most slimy ways imaginable. This isn't limited to inviduals or businesses - businesses (usually smaller to medium sized businesses) get burned by these tactics. It's a screwed up system and we are unfortunate to be living in such an unfree society. Soon there will be so many laws and regulations that everyone in North America will either be a criminal or face the possibility of being sued for remembering song lyrics or using a name they shouldn't have. (Get that sticker off your bumper or pay the $200 license fee to LMI !) Think I'm exagerrating? Maybe. It's not that bad yet, but how bad it will get is definitely not clear.
As for information wants to be free, I'm ambivalent about that - I prefer the public domain mentality - free software should be public domain and you can do whatever you want with it. Yes, including redistributing modified binaries. I'm also a supporter of abolishing "IP" law. If you want to copy something, you should be able to copy it. People survived for centuries before Britney Spears and Windows XP were household names, and there is no way you will ever be able to convince me that they should be continuously paid for $0 copies of data or sound.
Then again, that's just my opinion and I'm just a loony libertarian. Take it or leave it :)
What I'm concerned about is that the trademark law could be wangled into allowing the LMI to manipulate and dominate the Linux computing world, and injure Linux and the Free/Open source movement in general by giving it a bad rep and creating animosity between the LMI and companies building their products with or on top of Linux.
Of course it would be nice not to blame Linus or the lawyers involved or anything like that, and I don't necessarily have a problem with Linus or any individual lawyers, but unfortunately in this day and age, especially in North America, legal issues have spiraled out of control, and whenever lawyers get involved, it's usually about extracting money from someone or some entity. I don't want to sound dramatic, but this isn't a free society from that point of view anymore, and there are too many laws and regulations which can be manipulated by top dogs and their lawyers - and this is why I am concerned whenever I read about organizations like these whose sole purpose seems to be milking business by using the legal system.Ok, I'll grant you that.
What about systems, though? Let's draw up a scenario so that we're both on the same page. Company XYZ is a computer vendor, the CEO, Miss F, has decided that the company should take the Linux route since she has experienced Linux as being a very reliable and powerful system. The company produces Linux servers and desktops, and advertises them as such.Does Miss F get a letter from LMI demanding a license fee for each system her company sells, or some sort of global sublicensing fee? (The LMI states that for-profit companies will be charged according to profit, but they don't state whether that's total corporate profit or whether different divisions will be treated differently - ie, will each license or sublicense be charged according to a certain bracket?
In 5 years' time, will the LMI be extracting vast tribute from Linux vendors, and blackmailing them a-la Microsoft?
LMI: You are free to install FreeBSD on your systems, vendor and customer, but you will then be charged more for Linux licenses, or, depending on how far you push FreeBSD, you will not be allowed to sell systems containing our trademarked "Linux" text, graphics, terms and figuroos systems any longer.
Pretty scary.I understand where you're coming from, but where do you draw the line?
If a company advertises custom-built Linux firewalls / intranet servers / or whatever and uses Linux logos and graphics, is that not acceptable?Yet Linux distributions often use these trademarked terms and figuroos without any legal action taken against them.
if it's only about companies using the terms and figuroos for things which clearly are not Linux-based or have anything to do with Linux, perhaps it's more understandable, but how many companies do you suppose are doing that?I don't really understand this latest spat of legal attacks - it seems very uncharacteristic of Linus. It looks like the LMI is just trying to cash in on the Linux name, despite people having used it commercially and non-commercially for years without paying these license fees. It just seems a bit odd to me.
Is it just me, or is FreeBSD is starting to look pretty good right now from an ideological point of view? Pulling out lawyers is an awfully Microsoft-ish/SCO-ish thing to do.
Being from a country that is considered a hotspot for spam, I naturally appreciate any effort to eradicate spam, BUT blacklists take things too far. They don't seem very effective and only serve to irritate and inconvenience people who have done nothing wrong and are using their IPs for only legitimate purposes.
This especially effects smaller ISPs and hosting providers, who get slammed despite in al ot of cases being able to prove that no spam was originating from their network and that htey have secure servers. These blacklist operators have automated systems checking the "vulnerability" of networks and adding IPs willy-nilly. This has a negligible effect on actual spammers, since they will just hop to another network when a network they are using gets blacklisted. It's almost like the gun control system in Canada, only worse since it is automated in addition to being highly inaccurate and ineffective. This new system smells too much like a hyped-up, buzzword-added blacklist for my liking.
I know that GM has gotten a lot of flak over the years about not being as reliable as Japanese cars, but I have had the exact opposite experience. My last car was a Chevy Blazer, and it was absolutely solid. Very few problems although I drove it into the ground (driving 60 miles a day to college in awful traffic). The car I had before that was a Toyota RAV4, and man, what a piece of crap. The idling was never completely right, despite the car only being two years old when I got it, the rear tires always seemed to get slow-punctures, the head gasket blew, and the car just felt very sluggish after a year of driving.
After my bad experiences with the RAV4 and my good experiences with the Blazer I decided to stick to GM and bought a 2005 Equinox. it is absolutely solid and a very smooth ride. My girlfriend drives a VW Golf 1.9 TDI and it also seems very solid. So far I can honestly say that I prefer American, French, German, and British cars to Japanese cars, because of my own experiences and those of my friends and family - although a few still swear by Japanese cars, the majority don't, and I certainly don't. (Just an opinion, Your Mileage May Vary).
Movie pirates could always wait until the commercial DVD is released, and make rips / copies / etc from that. In fact, a while back they announced that Hollywood studios were considering releasing the movie and the DVD at the same time. if that happens, there will be no studio leak neccessary to get a "release-day rip".
Even if that doesn't happen, though, people can always wait until the DVD is out commercially or even at the local Blockbuster and make rips there. Why the rush? Personally I would rather buy the DVD, but I know that a lot of people prefer rips and downloads and copies - and there is absolutely nothing that the studios can do to stop them from doing these things, except try and widen the quality gap between the fakes and rips and their commercial DVD products.(Which will be difficult, but I don't think there is any other way, other than becoming a loss-leader, which in the MPAA's case won't be very helpful).
My experiences with data centers in Canada, the US, the UK, and South Africa so far lead me to believe that they are already pretty standardized - there may be slight differences, but all in all it's pretty amazing to see how similar data centers are when one is visiting countries that vary so greatly in other respects.
I guess that could be advice for immigrants from other countries who are in the tech industry: if you feel homesick, just spend more time in the data center - it will very likely look just like the data centers back home.
(generated from a quick script).
r is","baxter","bernard","brett","cade","dennis","da vid","donald","drew","earl","eauldman","frank","fr ed","garth","gavin","greg","gustav","herman","jack ","john","jason","jeffrey","jorge","kevin","keegan ","kyle","lon","lew","lervis","mark","nick","noah" ,"nolan","ned","nevin","otto","phillip","patrick", "quentin","ronald","roland","robert","rick","rudol ph","steve","stuart","shawn","sherb","tom","tim"," ubert","victor","walter","wendel","wallace","xavie r","yates","zeta","nico","nicholas","michael","mat thew","colin","kent","justin","erasmus","don","don ovan","dean","dane","dain","dwain","dwight","earp" ,"edward","ed","edgar","flynn","murphy","quayle"," stove","blitter"), "","water","","","house","","")
nick alistair, john garth, tom mark
blitter quaylesen, rudolph ottosen
drew phillip, jeffrey stove, kent mark
rick garth, quayle blittersen, shawn kent
colin nolanhouse, dwight yates, justin bernard
nico alistair, fred fredsen, steve jeffrey
quayle jason, matthew mcarnold, otto murphy
tom dane, ned earpbridge,alistair john
dain markbridge, dwight edward, ed blitter
andrew lew, mark donovan, nolan jeffrey
ned phillip, zeta xavier, tim shawnson
yates mcnico, matthew mcalistair, ben stoveson
murphy nick, nevin wallace, drew wallace
flynn nick, dwight nicoson, walter lervis
herman flynnwater, quayle donovansen
rudolph frankbridge, rick lon, murphy stove
roland quaylemc, john nevin, stuart baxter
michael shawnmc, nicholas dennis, erasmus nicholas
flynn xavier, kent gustav, rudolph mcgavin
xavier dwain, frank roland, victor dwight
xavier brett, mark patrick, david donovansen
murphy matthew, ned earl, lon dwight
quayle dean, lon nevin, patrick justin
keegan nicholasbridge, dennis kevin
greg wallace, patrick nicholas, drew lew
jeffrey frank, murphy gustav, kyle dane
aaron quentin, garth eauldman, stove stove
dwain flynn, dennis lervisson, murphy rolandwater
stuart nolan, steve nickhouse, bernard cade
ronald mcandrew, noah nolan, dain walter
keegan andrew, donald gavinsen, noah dennisbridge
shawn erasmus, ned earphouse, nico sherb,
rick stove, edgar ottosen, xavier don,
ubert yatesson, arnold mark, dean alistair
In case anyone is interested, here is the code:
import random
a=("andrew","alistair","aaron","arnold","ben","bo
b=("son","","","sen","","","mc","","","bridge",""
zz=1
while zz != 100:
c=random.choice(a)
d=random.choice(a)
e=random.choice(b)
zz=zz+1
print c+" "+d+e