Umm my copy of windows 95 doesn't claim to have dos 6.22. It claims "Windows 95. [Version 4.00.1111]" when you type ver. Which is nonsense of course. I've always refered to it as DOS 7. It seems to be basically dos 6.22 with all the help files excised (don't want anyone learning to use the prompt, oh no, they must be crippled by the GUI) and a few useful bsd ports added (tracert, ping, ftp.)
I do still have 6.22 with Windows 3.1 on another machine here, I have almost completely converted to linux, but my father doesn't want to learn anything new at this point. I have one complaint about Linux - bash honestly isn't at all what I expected in a sophisticated, mature shell - 4dos (www.jpsoftware.com - if you use any version of windows or OS/2 you should definately check this site out, 4dos/nt/os2) is a far better shell than anything *nix I've seen so far in some ways. Very sad that. Surely as many years and as many talented hacker/hours as have gone into *nix there has to be a powerful and easy to use shell out there?
Frankly, I think the better question here is why the other OSes don't have more 'fixed this vulnerability five months ago through a standard audit'. Is Linux not being reviewed formally and regularly? If not, why not? Do people doubt the benefits that regular code reviews yield?
Two words: opportunity cost. For anyone not familiar with those words - this means that the true cost of doing X is not just what we normally think of as the cost, but also the next best thing we might do instead. In this case, the cost of doing OBSD style audits is all the new programs you might have written in the same amount of time. Linux doesn't undergo those audits, and the reason is that linux developers feel that the other things they are doing with that time instead are more valueable.
So what is it then? Do other OS's developers just don't look at the OpenBSD pages to see what's fixed?
Well, as others have pointed out, the OBSD team doesn't so much fix security hole as generally tighten code. After the fact, some of their tightening is seen to have "fixed" a security problem that hadn't even been discovered when it was done, and that's when they announce "we fixed that x months ago." But x months ago no one new it was a flaw, and it was one of a number of code tightening efforts, which no one outside that team is all that likely to be following.
Also, keep in mind that, in relation to linux at least, the two code bases may both be open source but they are still two different codebases. Even if the linux developers took the time to read everything the OBSD team did, most of it wouldn't apply - Linux code != BSD code. The other BSD teams are the ones that could benefit from it, not the Linux developers. Remember, Linux Is Not UniX. It's a black-box clone of Unix, using no actual Unix code. So, with the rare exception possible, OBSD "fixes" simply won't apply to linux, which will have the same function, but not the same code to accomplish it.
I find this a little amusing. One thing that many non-Linux people complain about is that Linux is getting splitted into many distro's and like.
BSD have existed in many branches a long time, and few people argue that this isn't good for the *BSD's.
Although your point is well taken, there is a difference also. The BSD versions have fairly well defined goals, and they aren't the same. Whereas most Linux distros seem to be aiming at the same thing - replacing windows. I may not be a fan of that aim (I think it's aiming far too low) but they have every right to try that - it does seem like a lot of wasted effort to me though. Do we really need.rpm for instance? Why didn't redhat just use.deb? Do we really need RH and Mandrake and Caldera and SuSE and Corel all trying to do basically the same thing? Maybe. There are good arguments that this is a waste, and good arguments that the competition can be good, I'm not endorsing either, just pointing out that this is a different situation from BSD where the three variants have their own unique focus.
Can regular courts rule a law unconstitutional? I thought that only the Supreme Court could do that? This is an honest question coming from a Limey living in the U.S.A.
Certainly they can. IANAL, but they can and they have, as a quick google search can assure you. When they do, of course, the decision is almost always appealed, but they can and should make the correct decision to begin with. There is a rule of american jurisprudence which says that "No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law (or rule) and no
courts are bound to enforce it." Also, one among many precendents that imply it:
"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no right; it imposes
no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal
contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton
vs. Shelby County 118 U.S. 425 p.442.
Why is it that anyone that disagrees with anything a KDE partisan says is automatically assumed to be a GNOME partisan?
Just for the record, I think they BOTH suck unmentionable animal parts, AND I agree with what the first guy said about this article. It's full of flamebait.
Your freedom to swing your fist ends when it reaches my personal space.
That's too little freedom for you? Too bad. That's the way it is, and it will stay.
It's just the right amount of freedom I say.
You remind me of the folks that claim that they aren't truly free until they can sell themselves into slavery.
The whole philosophy of inalienable rights (why a contract in which you sell yourself into slavery is not binding) is very similar to the FSFs definition of Free Software. The conditions are simply that you can't do anything to make it unfree. You can't sell it into slavery. If you want to claim that prohibition infringes your freedom, fine, but you aren't going to convince me.
Public Domain is "perfectly free" from the point of view that demands the freedom to give up ones freedom. Free Software is "perfectly free" to those of us with enough common sense to note the contradiction in that.
But VCR copying is currently protected under fair use doctrine. Digital technologies have just had that right revoked by Congress through the DMCA. Hence, VCR technologies and the like now have no bearing on this case.
This is the heart of the matter, and why the court should have, and hopefully the next court to hear the case will, rule the DMCA unconstitutional and void.
Congress does not have the authority to revoke fair use. Fair use is a consequence of basic rights.
All the complaints about Mozilla - Netscape/AOL tie-ins, bloat, feature creep, unnecessary duplication of extant functionality, license incompatibility (galleon) - are about to be cured.
Umm no. This won't do anything about the bloat, the fact that Netscape is owned by AOL, or the feature creep... just the license incompatibility.
The MPL fork will remain the most cohesive, especially if the GPL releases lag behind the MPL. No one will maintain it as a full fledged project on its own (like the Linux Kernel is). It'll be more like GhostScript - the latest and greatest will cost you (cash), the next best is free (beer) - only in Mozilla's case it's costing freedom.
So who's forking it Einstein? Where do you get this assumption of a fork? It's not a fork, it's a dual-license.
In any case, when it comes time to submit a patch, submit it under the GPL, even if that means it won't make it into the Netscape-maintained codebase.
Oh, you want a fork, eh? Fine, you write it. Somehow I suspect your boss wouldn't appreciate you taking time off from your real job, of posting incredibly bad ideas on slashdot, to write a competitor to his browser, whatever the license.
GPL libraries may make RMS happy, but they have severe impact on the commercial uptake of those libraries...
Actually RMS' outlook on libraries is a bit more complicated than your statement implies. RMS does *not* advocate GPLing libraries that offer essentially the same capabilities as already existing unfree libraries do. Doing that is shooting yourself in the foot, as it will not affect unfree developers, since they don't really need the libraries in question, having non-GPLd libraries available for the same function. So libraries that do not provide unique functions should use the Lesser GPL.
Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library is a little out of date, but it covers this issue and makes the distinction between libraries that offer unique functionality (which should ideally be under the standard GPL) and those which do not (which should be under the Lesser GPL.)
The only case where RMS encourages using the GPL for a library is where the library offers unique functionality. In this case, it may be arguable that Gecko technically does, but as a practical consideration I don't think it should be looked at that way - unfree developers on the windows platforms at least (which are of course the vast majority) have the option to simply use Explorer components, so releasing Gecko under the GPL only would simply discourage it's use.
Dual-licensing is a decent compromise, achieving essentially the same affect as if they had simply licensed it under the LGPL all along...
Their land sharks weren't as familiar with the GPL as they should have been, they put a standard boilerplate on the beta release, and got called on it, and best I remember fixed things right up.
I can't believe people are still holding that against em. I've been called a GPL zealot over and over for my opinions here, and even I didn't think it was that big a deal.
And even if federal legislation is passed, there remains the outstanding First Amendment questions.
I disagree completely. The first amendment guarantees you can speak, not that other people are forced to pay to receive your speech.
The bigger problem with any federal law that might be passed is that, like this one, it will doubtless be designed to protect spammers, at least those with money, rather than stop them.
The only thing this bill would "do" if it is upheld is shield spammers. It's not going to affect the fly-by-net scum that make up the majority of spammers, as they will simply ignore it. What it WILL do is provide a shield of respectability for more established groups that want to spam you but are afraid of the repercussions.
$10 civil remedy per spam? Under national law in the US there is already a $500 civil remedy (under US Code 47.5.II, a better law than any that have been proposed since) - guess what? It doesn't mean squat unless you can prove who sent the crap. If you get spammed by someone foolish enough to include his real identity, by all means, file suit in small claims court and screw them hard. But the vast majority don't do that, and won't do that.
All this law means is that folks that aren't totally fly by night, that you can track down, will now have a shield that might or might not stand up in court or even be interpreted by an ISP to shield them from the booting they deserve - if they comply with it. "But your honor, this promotion (they never call it SPAM but that's what it is) was conducted in full compliance with HR00-1309, we move for immediate dismissal." "But, abuse@myprovider.com, this was not SPAM, it was mass marketing conducted in full compliance with HR00-1309."
The legislature of the state of colorado has no right to determine that my private mailbox can be abused by anyone as an advertising medium as long as they do it nicely. My mailbox is mine and is not for the purpose of unsolicited advertising, period.
Opt out is wrong for several reasons. First off it isn't honoured, and it never will be. Send your address to an opt out service and, if they don't spam you themselves, they will certainly add your list to the confirmed list they sell to all the other spammers. Don't believe me? Make a free email account, any of the dozens of places available, don't use it, don't give it to anyone, except for the "removal" addresses the spammers send you. Give it a few months, and you'll have tons of mail. I've done this, others have done this, it works.
Secondly, even if they honoured it, it's still an unnacceptable shift of responsibilities. If someone wants to use my address for advertising, they need to get my permission first. They have no right to demand that I mail them and "opt out" unless I opted in to begin with. If you disagree, think about this for a moment - how about I go around and find all the mailing lists I can that don't confirm joining (a practice that is fortunately rarer than it once was, but there are some) and burden you with removing yourself. How many mailing lists can I sign you up for in a day, before you say enough!? Their failure to confirm your subscription properly does NOT create any obligation to jump through their removal hoops. When someone spams you, you have no obligation to ASK them to quit - anymore than you have to ASK someone to stop stealing your car.
If I want to know about your product/service/chain letter I'll use one of the many fine search engines and find you. If you send me ads anyway, I WILL make sure that your provider knows about it, and if they don't care I'll be talking to their provider. No law is needed.
SPAM is network abuse, period, and IMOP all attempts to fight it through the legislature are fatally flawed. The legislature is the pawn of business, and a great many businesses want a license to spam. They have enough influence to ensure ALL legislation will have such a license embedded in it. The net is much better equipped to deal with spam. Organisations like maps and orbs do more good than any government will ever do. If certain networks want to be spam friendly, that is their right - but the rest of us have no obligation to carry their traffic. Let them have their own internet, and spam each other to their hearts content.
Ummm... where do they say that? I saw them cite all of the legal considerations that go into a fair-use decision, and then say for each of them, "this doesn't apply for Napster." They didn't try to argue that fair use is inapplicable for music in general
They are far too subtle to actually say it straight out. They cite the considerations they want to go into a fair use decision, and the arguments they want to be accepted as valid, which would rule out any such defense of Napster. This is what is worrying. If their version of the legal considerations in a fair use decision is accepted, it's hard to see what would be left of fair use.
In particular, I disagree with the implication that fair use must be transformative, the argument that sharing with people outside ones own home/RL family is inherently commercial, even when no money changes hands, and most especially the argument that the "Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is a relevant rebuttal to a fair use defense.
A few more points to consider:
Napster's claim that "the predominant use of Napster is to make temporary copies of a work to sample the work to decide whether to buy it," is unsupported and irrelevant.
I may agree that the claim is unsupported, but the claim that it is irrelevant is a different matter.
Also, read what they say about "space-shifting." This is a core fair use right, and while they carefully avoid coming straight out and denying it, the gist of their argument is certainly to deny it.
Further, contrary to Napster's claim, no Court has ever held that "space-shifting" is a fair use. The dicta in Diamond on which Napster relies merely suggested that private space shifting using the Rio player did not offend the purpose of the AHRA because the music was not obtained from an unauthorized third party distributor (in contrast to Napster) and because the Rio player (in contrast to Napster) did not allow further copies to be made and distributed.
There is a tremendous reversal of priority implicit in this argument - they want "fair use" to be limited to actions that "do not offend" copyright law and their own commercial expectations. But copyright law and any commercial expectations based on it must accomodate fair use, not the other way around.
Oh, and while it is probably true that no court has ever upheld it, that would be because it's not been challenged. It's the same issue at work when people copied records they owned to tape, so as to play them in their car.
You should be shocked. Those folks at the RIAA actually have a reason for what they are doing! They are right - using Napster harms the artist.
Actually, I disagree, there are some major flaws in their reasoning. Particularly when they essentially argue that fair use cannot apply to music. Read it carefully. Remember that copyright a special privilege instituted to encourage the development of the arts and sciences. Fair Use is the body of exceptions to copyright law necessary to prevent it from violating basic human rights. The RIAA would like to eliminate these exceptions. I believe their concern is not harm to artists but harm to their own business model, which is arguably worse for the artists than Napsters. Regardless of whether or not you agree, the fact remains that this harm is in depriving them of a privilege, not a basic right. If this harm cannot be avoided without weakening the protection of basic rights, that is too high a price to pay.
Using cigarettes harms your health. Both industries (the pirated music industry and the tobacco industry) will attempt to deny it; or claim that their users are at fault. In many ways, the parrellel between the industries is perfect.
I agree the analogy is a good one, but the claim that the user is at fault is correct. Do the tobacco companies hire goon squads to force people to smoke at gunpoint? Of course not. Hell, I should know, I was a smoker for over 16 years. I have no sympathy whatsoever with smokers that claim that tobacco companies are responsible for their smoking. The tobacco companies sell the stuff, whether you use it or not is your choice. And Napster doesn't force anyone to use their service at all, let alone use it for illegal purposes.
On the other side, both the tobacco companies and Napster are clearly not without blame either. The tobacco companies almost certainly have knowingly lied about the safety of their product, and should bear liability for that. That is a much more limited liability than the ridiculous rash of recent suits against them have claimed, however. And Napster, obviously, is guilty of encouraging their users to break the law. That, also is a much different matter in terms of responsibility from what their attacker wants to pin on them. Whatever moral condemnation Napster deserves for encouraging copyright infringement, there is something called Free Speech to be considered here. It is illegal for instance to grow certain plants in this country, but it is still legal to write and distribute books/web pages/etc encouraging and enabling people that want to grow those plants. However wrong I think Napsters actions are, better to have that wrong than to lose Free Speech.
While the RIAA may not be the best model, it certainly stands for one thing - copyright protection. Even that Linux kernel which you find dear is protected under the same copyright. "My enemy's enemy..." and all that: the RIAA stands in defense of basic copyright. Not even software licensing or anything legally questionable, but simply the copy protection part of copyright that's been at the heart of copyright law for many many years.
Again, I must disagree. The GNU license relies on copyright, yes, but it is a defensive application of copyright. Without copyright law, it would have no force, but it would also be unneeded. Visit gnu.org and read up on the philosoph behind the GPL.
What the RIAA is arguing in this case is NOT simply "the heart of copyright law for many many years" - their arguments, if accepted, essentially eliminate the fair use exceptions to copyright law that have been established for years as necessary to prevent copyright law from violating basic pre-existing rights, as well as the complete destruction of the important distinction between guilt by act and guilt by association.
Copyright laws were originally created to prevent corperations from stealing musicians / authors/etc work without just compensation.
Historically incorrect, and a logical contradiction.
You cannot steal something that is not owned. Copyrights are not just protected by copyright laws, they were created by copyright laws. Before copyright law, the right to reproduce musicians/authors/etc. work was not an owned property, therefore could not be stolen.
The US Constitution, for instance, specifically authorises the creation of copyright law, "to promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts by securing for limited times to authors... the exclusive right to their respective writings..." - not to prevent infringement of any pre-existing rights.
But is that a good law? You seem to assume it is, but there is room for disagreement.
The hot government interest right now is "money laundering" which allows them to arrest anyone at any time because nearly every one has something to do with money (or its relatives such as checks and wire transmissions). Almost any financial activity can be alleged to be money laundering based on the alleged "intent" of the accused. The government made sure that "intent" was mentioned in the law, for intent is only in a person's mind and it is difficult to prove that it was never there. The "money laundering" laws and agencies that implement them, may be the ultimate tool for controlling the citizens!
Law based on intent is usually bad law, and needs to be overturned. If you start an ISP because you really want a big pipe for your own personal use, downloading warez and kp say, does that mean that your otherwise legal business is illegal? I think not.
As you said, don't confuse morality and legality. Morally I condemn Napster. Legally I fear the precedent if they lose more than if they win.
I've got to think Taco knows the answer to that, and he's just trolling.
Anyways, that's obviously not an efficient way to do things. One virtual machine per customer is more likely what you would do with this. (Not to limit one per customer - some customers might actually need more than one, but still, that's the basic idea.) Running a buch of virtual linux boxes isn't going to do anything good for performance, of course, but within reason it shouldn't do much bad either, and you have the advantage of customizing each virtual box individually for it's intended use... different customers won't affect each others machines any more than they would if they each had a physical dedicated server.
And it should be very nice from a security standpoint too, you don't expose the real base OS to the outside world at all, all network traffic goes through one of the virtual linux boxes, and an exploit that compromises one doesn't affect the rest.
Someone will doubtless post the obligatory beowulf cluster comment by the time I press the submit button - of course this is silly. You will get better performance by not imposing the overhead of a virtual beowulf cluster and just dedicating the same resources to a single virtual uber-box.
Performancewise, mainframes are a mixed bag - you can't justify the expense if you are mainly concerned with number-crunching tasks, because a real physical beowulf cluster of alpha boxes, for example, will have a lot more bang for the buck there. Mainframes != supercomputers, they are totally different animals. The mainframes strength is IO, however, so this sort of setup could be very cost effective for massive database applications, web server farms, and the like.
Re:Ugg, massive uncalled for waste of screen space
on
KDE 2.0 Beta 3 Is Out
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· Score: 2
I have to agree with most of what you said. It is really sad to see linux developers putting out products that seem to aim more towards being like windows, instead of better than windows.
Not to put down the KDE or the GNOME teams, they are putting out the software, I am not.;^) And they've done a really good job in some ways, they deserve a lot of credit. I use components of both KDE and GNOME at times, and while I can imagine better alternatives, I am not the coder to write them, so my bitching is completely with that in mind, and with a lot of respect for the people that are producing usable software, however much I dislike some of the choices they have made.
Still, I personally would be so much more happy to see them working on something fundamentally different and better than windows instead, and I really think they are selling themselves and free software short.
There has to be a reason that GNUStep is languishing, while KDE and GNOME seem to be swamped with volunteers. I can't for the life of me think of one though. I'm trying really hard too.
we have to support it for the people who *do* want it.
Why?
I've managed to wean several people from text/html to text/enriched by getting them to switch to a mailer (Pegasus Mail) that is well behaved. I've yet to have one miss a "feature" in the transition. In my experience, people that want to use HTML in their email don't want HTML per se, they don't even know what it is, they just want to set colours or make font changes or other simple things like that. That's perfectly doable with enriched text.
I've only once ever seen an HTML email that couldn't have been duplicated in text/enriched, and it was from a spammer that thought he'd be cute and hide his return address in some obfuscated java-script. Not the kind of customer I would be trying to cater to.
If you were making a car, would you feel compelled to add a "feature" to make the headlights flash at just the right frequency to trigger epileptic seizures? Even if the other guy was doing it?
I suspect that it's more a matter of you have this really neat GD(T?)KHTML widget handy, and just can't resist the temptation to use it. If so, please, resist that temptation. It will help no one, and hurt many.
Bringing the masses to Linux could be a good thing - but not if it means bringing Linux down to level of the competition. Which is a broader point I suppose, but one I really wish both the GNOME and KDE developers would show more appreciation of. Like the woman who wanted to be equal with men, linux applications that try to be equal to their windows counterparts are wishing for a demotion, not a promotion.
It's an option that shouldn't exist. Like an option to set your cars headlights to flicker at just the right frequency to cause every epileptic you pass to have a seizure.
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Umm my copy of windows 95 doesn't claim to have dos 6.22. It claims "Windows 95. [Version 4.00.1111]" when you type ver. Which is nonsense of course. I've always refered to it as DOS 7. It seems to be basically dos 6.22 with all the help files excised (don't want anyone learning to use the prompt, oh no, they must be crippled by the GUI) and a few useful bsd ports added (tracert, ping, ftp.)
I do still have 6.22 with Windows 3.1 on another machine here, I have almost completely converted to linux, but my father doesn't want to learn anything new at this point. I have one complaint about Linux - bash honestly isn't at all what I expected in a sophisticated, mature shell - 4dos (www.jpsoftware.com - if you use any version of windows or OS/2 you should definately check this site out, 4dos/nt/os2) is a far better shell than anything *nix I've seen so far in some ways. Very sad that. Surely as many years and as many talented hacker/hours as have gone into *nix there has to be a powerful and easy to use shell out there?
Two words: opportunity cost. For anyone not familiar with those words - this means that the true cost of doing X is not just what we normally think of as the cost, but also the next best thing we might do instead. In this case, the cost of doing OBSD style audits is all the new programs you might have written in the same amount of time. Linux doesn't undergo those audits, and the reason is that linux developers feel that the other things they are doing with that time instead are more valueable.
Well, as others have pointed out, the OBSD team doesn't so much fix security hole as generally tighten code. After the fact, some of their tightening is seen to have "fixed" a security problem that hadn't even been discovered when it was done, and that's when they announce "we fixed that x months ago." But x months ago no one new it was a flaw, and it was one of a number of code tightening efforts, which no one outside that team is all that likely to be following.
Also, keep in mind that, in relation to linux at least, the two code bases may both be open source but they are still two different codebases. Even if the linux developers took the time to read everything the OBSD team did, most of it wouldn't apply - Linux code != BSD code. The other BSD teams are the ones that could benefit from it, not the Linux developers. Remember, Linux Is Not UniX. It's a black-box clone of Unix, using no actual Unix code. So, with the rare exception possible, OBSD "fixes" simply won't apply to linux, which will have the same function, but not the same code to accomplish it.
Although your point is well taken, there is a difference also. The BSD versions have fairly well defined goals, and they aren't the same. Whereas most Linux distros seem to be aiming at the same thing - replacing windows. I may not be a fan of that aim (I think it's aiming far too low) but they have every right to try that - it does seem like a lot of wasted effort to me though. Do we really need .rpm for instance? Why didn't redhat just use .deb? Do we really need RH and Mandrake and Caldera and SuSE and Corel all trying to do basically the same thing? Maybe. There are good arguments that this is a waste, and good arguments that the competition can be good, I'm not endorsing either, just pointing out that this is a different situation from BSD where the three variants have their own unique focus.
Can regular courts rule a law unconstitutional? I thought that only the Supreme Court could do that? This is an honest question coming from a Limey living in the U.S.A.
Certainly they can. IANAL, but they can and they have, as a quick google search can assure you. When they do, of course, the decision is almost always appealed, but they can and should make the correct decision to begin with. There is a rule of american jurisprudence which says that "No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law (or rule) and no courts are bound to enforce it." Also, one among many precendents that imply it:
Why is it that anyone that disagrees with anything a KDE partisan says is automatically assumed to be a GNOME partisan?
Just for the record, I think they BOTH suck unmentionable animal parts, AND I agree with what the first guy said about this article. It's full of flamebait.
Your freedom to swing your fist ends when it reaches my personal space.
That's too little freedom for you? Too bad. That's the way it is, and it will stay.
It's just the right amount of freedom I say.
You remind me of the folks that claim that they aren't truly free until they can sell themselves into slavery.
The whole philosophy of inalienable rights (why a contract in which you sell yourself into slavery is not binding) is very similar to the FSFs definition of Free Software. The conditions are simply that you can't do anything to make it unfree. You can't sell it into slavery. If you want to claim that prohibition infringes your freedom, fine, but you aren't going to convince me.
Public Domain is "perfectly free" from the point of view that demands the freedom to give up ones freedom. Free Software is "perfectly free" to those of us with enough common sense to note the contradiction in that.
This is the heart of the matter, and why the court should have, and hopefully the next court to hear the case will, rule the DMCA unconstitutional and void.
Congress does not have the authority to revoke fair use. Fair use is a consequence of basic rights.
Didn't say it was the same ;^) - said the effect is basically the same.
This is nonsense from beginning to end!
Umm no. This won't do anything about the bloat, the fact that Netscape is owned by AOL, or the feature creep... just the license incompatibility.
So who's forking it Einstein? Where do you get this assumption of a fork? It's not a fork, it's a dual-license.
Oh, you want a fork, eh? Fine, you write it. Somehow I suspect your boss wouldn't appreciate you taking time off from your real job, of posting incredibly bad ideas on slashdot, to write a competitor to his browser, whatever the license.
Go away, troll.
Or, depending on your perspective, the MPL.
Actually RMS' outlook on libraries is a bit more complicated than your statement implies. RMS does *not* advocate GPLing libraries that offer essentially the same capabilities as already existing unfree libraries do. Doing that is shooting yourself in the foot, as it will not affect unfree developers, since they don't really need the libraries in question, having non-GPLd libraries available for the same function. So libraries that do not provide unique functions should use the Lesser GPL.
Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library is a little out of date, but it covers this issue and makes the distinction between libraries that offer unique functionality (which should ideally be under the standard GPL) and those which do not (which should be under the Lesser GPL.)
The only case where RMS encourages using the GPL for a library is where the library offers unique functionality. In this case, it may be arguable that Gecko technically does, but as a practical consideration I don't think it should be looked at that way - unfree developers on the windows platforms at least (which are of course the vast majority) have the option to simply use Explorer components, so releasing Gecko under the GPL only would simply discourage it's use.
Dual-licensing is a decent compromise, achieving essentially the same affect as if they had simply licensed it under the LGPL all along...
Their land sharks weren't as familiar with the GPL as they should have been, they put a standard boilerplate on the beta release, and got called on it, and best I remember fixed things right up.
I can't believe people are still holding that against em. I've been called a GPL zealot over and over for my opinions here, and even I didn't think it was that big a deal.
I disagree completely. The first amendment guarantees you can speak, not that other people are forced to pay to receive your speech.
The bigger problem with any federal law that might be passed is that, like this one, it will doubtless be designed to protect spammers, at least those with money, rather than stop them.
The only thing this bill would "do" if it is upheld is shield spammers. It's not going to affect the fly-by-net scum that make up the majority of spammers, as they will simply ignore it. What it WILL do is provide a shield of respectability for more established groups that want to spam you but are afraid of the repercussions.
$10 civil remedy per spam? Under national law in the US there is already a $500 civil remedy (under US Code 47.5.II, a better law than any that have been proposed since) - guess what? It doesn't mean squat unless you can prove who sent the crap. If you get spammed by someone foolish enough to include his real identity, by all means, file suit in small claims court and screw them hard. But the vast majority don't do that, and won't do that.
All this law means is that folks that aren't totally fly by night, that you can track down, will now have a shield that might or might not stand up in court or even be interpreted by an ISP to shield them from the booting they deserve - if they comply with it. "But your honor, this promotion (they never call it SPAM but that's what it is) was conducted in full compliance with HR00-1309, we move for immediate dismissal." "But, abuse@myprovider.com, this was not SPAM, it was mass marketing conducted in full compliance with HR00-1309."
The legislature of the state of colorado has no right to determine that my private mailbox can be abused by anyone as an advertising medium as long as they do it nicely. My mailbox is mine and is not for the purpose of unsolicited advertising, period.
Opt out is wrong for several reasons. First off it isn't honoured, and it never will be. Send your address to an opt out service and, if they don't spam you themselves, they will certainly add your list to the confirmed list they sell to all the other spammers. Don't believe me? Make a free email account, any of the dozens of places available, don't use it, don't give it to anyone, except for the "removal" addresses the spammers send you. Give it a few months, and you'll have tons of mail. I've done this, others have done this, it works.
Secondly, even if they honoured it, it's still an unnacceptable shift of responsibilities. If someone wants to use my address for advertising, they need to get my permission first. They have no right to demand that I mail them and "opt out" unless I opted in to begin with. If you disagree, think about this for a moment - how about I go around and find all the mailing lists I can that don't confirm joining (a practice that is fortunately rarer than it once was, but there are some) and burden you with removing yourself. How many mailing lists can I sign you up for in a day, before you say enough!? Their failure to confirm your subscription properly does NOT create any obligation to jump through their removal hoops. When someone spams you, you have no obligation to ASK them to quit - anymore than you have to ASK someone to stop stealing your car.
If I want to know about your product/service/chain letter I'll use one of the many fine search engines and find you. If you send me ads anyway, I WILL make sure that your provider knows about it, and if they don't care I'll be talking to their provider. No law is needed.
SPAM is network abuse, period, and IMOP all attempts to fight it through the legislature are fatally flawed. The legislature is the pawn of business, and a great many businesses want a license to spam. They have enough influence to ensure ALL legislation will have such a license embedded in it. The net is much better equipped to deal with spam. Organisations like maps and orbs do more good than any government will ever do. If certain networks want to be spam friendly, that is their right - but the rest of us have no obligation to carry their traffic. Let them have their own internet, and spam each other to their hearts content.
But if you're thinking of using this to check web page accessibility, check out the Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer instead.
They are far too subtle to actually say it straight out. They cite the considerations they want to go into a fair use decision, and the arguments they want to be accepted as valid, which would rule out any such defense of Napster. This is what is worrying. If their version of the legal considerations in a fair use decision is accepted, it's hard to see what would be left of fair use.
In particular, I disagree with the implication that fair use must be transformative, the argument that sharing with people outside ones own home/RL family is inherently commercial, even when no money changes hands, and most especially the argument that the "Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is a relevant rebuttal to a fair use defense.
A few more points to consider:
I may agree that the claim is unsupported, but the claim that it is irrelevant is a different matter.
Also, read what they say about "space-shifting." This is a core fair use right, and while they carefully avoid coming straight out and denying it, the gist of their argument is certainly to deny it.
There is a tremendous reversal of priority implicit in this argument - they want "fair use" to be limited to actions that "do not offend" copyright law and their own commercial expectations. But copyright law and any commercial expectations based on it must accomodate fair use, not the other way around.
Oh, and while it is probably true that no court has ever upheld it, that would be because it's not been challenged. It's the same issue at work when people copied records they owned to tape, so as to play them in their car.
Hope that clears up your questions.
Actually, I disagree, there are some major flaws in their reasoning. Particularly when they essentially argue that fair use cannot apply to music. Read it carefully. Remember that copyright a special privilege instituted to encourage the development of the arts and sciences. Fair Use is the body of exceptions to copyright law necessary to prevent it from violating basic human rights. The RIAA would like to eliminate these exceptions. I believe their concern is not harm to artists but harm to their own business model, which is arguably worse for the artists than Napsters. Regardless of whether or not you agree, the fact remains that this harm is in depriving them of a privilege, not a basic right. If this harm cannot be avoided without weakening the protection of basic rights, that is too high a price to pay.
I agree the analogy is a good one, but the claim that the user is at fault is correct. Do the tobacco companies hire goon squads to force people to smoke at gunpoint? Of course not. Hell, I should know, I was a smoker for over 16 years. I have no sympathy whatsoever with smokers that claim that tobacco companies are responsible for their smoking. The tobacco companies sell the stuff, whether you use it or not is your choice. And Napster doesn't force anyone to use their service at all, let alone use it for illegal purposes.
On the other side, both the tobacco companies and Napster are clearly not without blame either. The tobacco companies almost certainly have knowingly lied about the safety of their product, and should bear liability for that. That is a much more limited liability than the ridiculous rash of recent suits against them have claimed, however. And Napster, obviously, is guilty of encouraging their users to break the law. That, also is a much different matter in terms of responsibility from what their attacker wants to pin on them. Whatever moral condemnation Napster deserves for encouraging copyright infringement, there is something called Free Speech to be considered here. It is illegal for instance to grow certain plants in this country, but it is still legal to write and distribute books/web pages/etc encouraging and enabling people that want to grow those plants. However wrong I think Napsters actions are, better to have that wrong than to lose Free Speech.
Again, I must disagree. The GNU license relies on copyright, yes, but it is a defensive application of copyright. Without copyright law, it would have no force, but it would also be unneeded. Visit gnu.org and read up on the philosoph behind the GPL.
What the RIAA is arguing in this case is NOT simply "the heart of copyright law for many many years" - their arguments, if accepted, essentially eliminate the fair use exceptions to copyright law that have been established for years as necessary to prevent copyright law from violating basic pre-existing rights, as well as the complete destruction of the important distinction between guilt by act and guilt by association.
Historically incorrect, and a logical contradiction.
You cannot steal something that is not owned. Copyrights are not just protected by copyright laws, they were created by copyright laws. Before copyright law, the right to reproduce musicians/authors/etc. work was not an owned property, therefore could not be stolen.
The US Constitution, for instance, specifically authorises the creation of copyright law, "to promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts by securing for limited times to authors... the exclusive right to their respective writings..." - not to prevent infringement of any pre-existing rights.
But is that a good law? You seem to assume it is, but there is room for disagreement.
Law based on intent is usually bad law, and needs to be overturned. If you start an ISP because you really want a big pipe for your own personal use, downloading warez and kp say, does that mean that your otherwise legal business is illegal? I think not.
As you said, don't confuse morality and legality. Morally I condemn Napster. Legally I fear the precedent if they lose more than if they win.
I've got to think Taco knows the answer to that, and he's just trolling.
Anyways, that's obviously not an efficient way to do things. One virtual machine per customer is more likely what you would do with this. (Not to limit one per customer - some customers might actually need more than one, but still, that's the basic idea.) Running a buch of virtual linux boxes isn't going to do anything good for performance, of course, but within reason it shouldn't do much bad either, and you have the advantage of customizing each virtual box individually for it's intended use... different customers won't affect each others machines any more than they would if they each had a physical dedicated server.
And it should be very nice from a security standpoint too, you don't expose the real base OS to the outside world at all, all network traffic goes through one of the virtual linux boxes, and an exploit that compromises one doesn't affect the rest.
Someone will doubtless post the obligatory beowulf cluster comment by the time I press the submit button - of course this is silly. You will get better performance by not imposing the overhead of a virtual beowulf cluster and just dedicating the same resources to a single virtual uber-box.
Performancewise, mainframes are a mixed bag - you can't justify the expense if you are mainly concerned with number-crunching tasks, because a real physical beowulf cluster of alpha boxes, for example, will have a lot more bang for the buck there. Mainframes != supercomputers, they are totally different animals. The mainframes strength is IO, however, so this sort of setup could be very cost effective for massive database applications, web server farms, and the like.
I have to agree with most of what you said. It is really sad to see linux developers putting out products that seem to aim more towards being like windows, instead of better than windows.
Not to put down the KDE or the GNOME teams, they are putting out the software, I am not. ;^) And they've done a really good job in some ways, they deserve a lot of credit. I use components of both KDE and GNOME at times, and while I can imagine better alternatives, I am not the coder to write them, so my bitching is completely with that in mind, and with a lot of respect for the people that are producing usable software, however much I dislike some of the choices they have made.
Still, I personally would be so much more happy to see them working on something fundamentally different and better than windows instead, and I really think they are selling themselves and free software short.
There has to be a reason that GNUStep is languishing, while KDE and GNOME seem to be swamped with volunteers. I can't for the life of me think of one though. I'm trying really hard too.
I understood that.
Why?
I've managed to wean several people from text/html to text/enriched by getting them to switch to a mailer (Pegasus Mail) that is well behaved. I've yet to have one miss a "feature" in the transition. In my experience, people that want to use HTML in their email don't want HTML per se, they don't even know what it is, they just want to set colours or make font changes or other simple things like that. That's perfectly doable with enriched text.
I've only once ever seen an HTML email that couldn't have been duplicated in text/enriched, and it was from a spammer that thought he'd be cute and hide his return address in some obfuscated java-script. Not the kind of customer I would be trying to cater to.
If you were making a car, would you feel compelled to add a "feature" to make the headlights flash at just the right frequency to trigger epileptic seizures? Even if the other guy was doing it?
I suspect that it's more a matter of you have this really neat GD(T?)KHTML widget handy, and just can't resist the temptation to use it. If so, please, resist that temptation. It will help no one, and hurt many.
Bringing the masses to Linux could be a good thing - but not if it means bringing Linux down to level of the competition. Which is a broader point I suppose, but one I really wish both the GNOME and KDE developers would show more appreciation of. Like the woman who wanted to be equal with men, linux applications that try to be equal to their windows counterparts are wishing for a demotion, not a promotion.
I'm sure it was, that's besides the point.
It's an option that shouldn't exist. Like an option to set your cars headlights to flicker at just the right frequency to cause every epileptic you pass to have a seizure.