From my initial reading to the documents on Geoworks site (IANAL), it seems there will be no possibility of developing OSS tools to develop WAP applications... at least in any country that has the Geoworks patents.
According to Geoworks, anything touching WAP/WML is theirs, and you have to license it from them. This includes sites that serve WAP applications, phones, development tools, etc.
For us USA citizens, it's going to be the same situation as it is for working on OSS crypto. Blech!
Yeah, it's interesting to think of us (humanity) as an ecosystem that other creatures live in.
What makes us a bigger target (so to speak) for virus and harmful bacteria is simply our sucess at propagating. As I recall, our biomass (number of individuals times average weight) is now greater than any other vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish). Combine that with our habit of living in large, crowded cities, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
The only thing saving us currently (until more anti-virals and antibiotics come along) is good hygine. So wash your hands after you've gone to the bathroom, dammit!
If you're interested in the evolutionary biology view on all this, I recommend Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague".
I agree. I think it'd be better to have a poll of the slashdot community to vote on what new projects we'd like to see. Then for the top (say 5) projects, put up bounties on those two software bazaar sites. Give it a month or so for people to write up their proposals, and let them get coding.
I agree with most of what you've said. I believe a system administrators job is to maximize the long-term availability of the service, not just the service for a particular day (unless there is something unusual about the day, such as a project nearing completion).
If the first thing you do is reboot, then yes, you'll get the service back up and running in the shortest amount of time. But unless you understand why there was a problem in the first place, you haven't really fixed anything.
It's amusing to hear people talk about "transient" failures. With computers, there is almost always an explaination for why something went wrong. It's been my experience that with Windows, it's hard to find that explaination. With Unix systems, it's easier. With OSS Unix systems, it's even easier still.
If your first instinct is to reboot a system, you may be destroying valuable information on the cause of the problem. Such things like what state various daemons were in, which processes were running, etc. While the system is still running, it's possible to extract more debugging information out of the system (which should be analyzed later). For example, you can cause named to dump state information to a file.
So in almost all cases, even if you need to reboot the system, you owe it to yourself to at least gather as much information as possible first.
I don't think anyone should be stressing the point that soring a DVD movie on existing media is impractical.
Why? because media costs will eventually go down. It may be impractical to copy DVDs today, but next year may be a different story. Everyone in the computer industry knows this.
We should just stick to the argument that it's possible to copy a DVD without DeCSS.
What you say is certainly true. I should have said 'tied up for our field of use' instead. For this particular domain name (not mentioned here to protect the guilty), it's highly unlikely that anyone would want it except for our field of use. And even if someone wanted this domain name to sell faucets or airline tickets, I wouldn't care.
If they want the domain name, and are going in our field of use, then they'll be in for a fight. We can afford lawyers too.
But I'm not worried either way. The guy who has it now isn't going to use it himself, so he's got to try to find some other sucker to buy it. He'll probably just give it up after a while. And then we'll pick it up cheap. Patience is a virtue,
I work for a company that has a.net domain name, because the.com domain was already taken.
We were recently contacted by the guy who owns the.com domain name, who now wants us to pay him something like USD $10,000 for the.com name.
I told our president that he should defintely not pay. The domain name speculators are just trying to leech money off others, without providing any useful service themselves.
It's kind of funny... the guy (who has the.com name) says he's looking to sell it, and has got other bidders. Hah! We've got the trademark tied up in the USA, so no one else is going to touch it. We'll just wait for it to become available for the regular price.
If people didn't have such a hang-up about.com domain names, there wouldn't be this kind of problem. Granted, we're not looking to start a portal site that people will hopefully stumble across by accident. But I sure as heck didn't find Slashdot by guessing at a domain name. Actually, except for major companies (like IBM) I don't usually try to guess a domain name, but use a directory instead.
Even if I'm trying to start a portal, I'm not going to pay big bucks for a good name. I'll just come up with another.
DIPC is quite an interesting idea. I've already read a little on it, and plan to read more. But I can easily see why Linus wouldn't want it in the kernel.
We've already got several mechanisms for doing this kind of thing: from RPC, to PVM and MPI, to heavyweights like CORBA. RPC is in the kernel already, I'm not sure about MPI, and PVM and CORBA are completely in user-space.
Linus probably just doesn't want to add yet a distributed programming mechanism that's (currently) specific to Linux.
Digression: What we really need is a Linux kernel patch repository. That would give people a better idea of the ways in which Linux could be extended, and would be a central place that would give better publicity to projects such as DIPC.
1. The use of the word "raping" shows a strong bias by the author of the quoted section. I am not very likely to take the rest of the section too seriously after encountering such hyperbole.
2. If the 'bot was able to get to the directory (without breaking into the system or using a password) then it wasn't a private directory, it was a public one. If I do a wget on a site, everything it returns is publically available. "Private" means it's not accessible using the normal protocols (in this case, http and ftp).
Are there any other sources of information on this particular incident?
I have a cable modem, and it's great for downloads and on-line games. However, I don't typically use it to download CD images for stuff like Linux or OpenBSD.
Why? The same reason I send money to NPR. They do stuff, and I use it, and I appreciate it. I support them. Often it's the best possible use of my money.
If I like HP's E-Speak, it'll be the same situation. I'll pay a little extra for the "official" distribution. I'd be willing to pay extra for support from them if I needed it.
And if I need some extensive customization of E-Speak, who's the first company I'm going to call? HP of course. If they build up a good reputation with me (and anyone releasing OSS gets a big bonus), I am highly likely to be a customer of theirs in the future.
Having industries based on OSS is the best possible world for me at least. I can just run the stuff myself if I understand it sufficiently. If I have more money that time, I can pay someone else to do so. Maximum choice. I like it.
I'm of the same attitude myself. I'm starting to prefer OpenBSD for things like firewalls, but I wouldn't want to use it as my desktop machine every day. Each has it's place... what it's best at.
Coming from the Linux viewpoint, it's not as if anything big is missing with OpenBSD, but the little things annoy me. Like having to manually install GNU ls (I'd die without --color:-), samba, etc. Yes, that stuff is in the ports tree, but it takes more effort to install and configure.
Take printing for example. With OpenBSD by default, I get the lpd binary and not much more. I have to do the rest myself.
With RedHat Linux (even distributions a year or two old) I can pop up the ol' printtool, point, click, click, read the resulting printcap entry, and I'm done. It already comes with a decent print filter, ghostscript, mpage, the whole 9 yards. It's easy. I like it.
Yes, I know, I'm being lazy. I could read the printcap (5) man page, I could write or find my own print filter. I could, but I don't want to. Setting up printers is so mundane it should be easy and quick (less than 5 minutes).
There are some things that I do want to learn all the details of... where I pore over each line of code to make sure it's correct, like the firewall rules. I don't mind at all spending a couple hours on that.
I'm certainly very glad of the work Theo and the gang are doing, but that doesn't mean that OpenBSD is the be-all and end-all. Neither are any of the Linux distributions I've tried: RedHat (complete and easy to configure, but bloated) and Debian (better install configurations, but slower release schedule and I really don't like dselect). I'm glad they all exist so that I can pick what's right for the job.
Hmph. Instead of getting faster DSL, I may be getting a slower one. Our business is too far from the CO, so they can't install SDSL, even at the lowest speed.
These two ISPs I'm talking to say they might start to support IDSL (or DSL-Lite), which can go longer distances but at a slower bit-rate (140kbps).
I agree, anything with interesting data should have a UPS. I'd still like to be able to use XFS now for my fileservers, but I'll wait at least 6 months for people to work out the bugs.
I've been fairly pleased with Best Power UPSs. They come with free UPS shutdown software for all major Unices, which includes source code (but no, it's not really OSS, sorry). The new Patriot Pro line is smaller and cheaper than the Ferrups ones that I had been buying. Even my fileserver at home is on a UPS. My data is worth it.
If you need OSS software for Solaris, be sure to also check out my friend's web site The Written Word.
He's got a lot of stuff available, and all of it in pkgadd format, and all the stuff at his web site for Solaris installs in/opt, instead of the mix between/usr/local and/opt you see on sunfreeware.com. There's also CD subscriptions available.
I don't think you're going to find many Sparc 20's at close to that price, especially if you start adding a new graphics card and processor.
You don't really want to run the 20's with a full compliment of peripherals because the power supply is puny. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the 10's and 20's (and the 2's) but I wouldn't buy any more today.
The market for S-Bus system stuff is starting to get tight. Ross has been out of business for over a year (at least the division that made upgrades for Sparcs). Some companies that already have a lot of 20's are hoarding them because they can't get spare parts anymore.
If you have to do Solaris SPARC development, I'd get one or two 5's and stick them on the network to run builds. But I certainly wouldn't use them as my main machines. If I can't hang a SGI 1600SW monitor off of it, it's not even worth considering.:-)
I've had a cable modem for about 6 months now with MediaOne (who just got bought out by AT&T)
It works pretty well most of the time. There have been at least a couple outages (6+ hours) in the time I've had it. That's not such a big deal for me, because I've kept my regular ISP account too.
It's certainly great for games (if you play Half-Life:TFC you may occasionaly encounter me as 'Boomer'). That extra 50 ms does make a difference.
So rather than stay here and ramble on books, why don't we all/mail companies and tell them we love Linux and would love their device supported on it?
Heh, these days my favorite companies are the ones who produce devices which have Linux drivers readily available. Since I can now find Linux-compatable drivers for most classes of devices, I don't worry about this stuff too much anymore.
Maybe Wall-streeters thinking that the upcoming Linux-related IPOs are not hot is a good thing... for me. It may give me a chance to buy some shares in VA or someone without having to pay through the nose for it.:-)
Waikato is working on many interesting things, including an OOP called Sather (also a GNU project). I would love to fly down there to work on my Master's for a couple years.
But as with many things, I just don't have the time. I suppose I need to work harder so that I can retire early.
There's a whole bunch of independant publishers out there. Unfortunately, the more money they have, the less likely they are to take a chance on someone they don't know. Just like the rest of traditional media, I suppose.
I guess the trick would be to find a small publishing company that's big enough to have some cash to make an initial run of at least 1000. Here are a couple that seem to be moderately successful (as opposed to wildly successful like Image and Dark Horse):
Abstract Studio (publishers of Strangers in Paradise), SIPnet@aol.com, P.O. Box 271487, Houston TX, 666-0238
Slave Labor Graphics (publishers of Milk and Cheese - Dairy Products Gone Bad), 325 S. First St. #301, San Jose, CA 95113, (800) 866-8929
Slashdot Mirror
From my initial reading to the documents on Geoworks site (IANAL), it seems there will be no possibility of developing OSS tools to develop WAP applications... at least in any country that has the Geoworks patents.
According to Geoworks, anything touching WAP/WML is theirs, and you have to license it from them. This includes sites that serve WAP applications, phones, development tools, etc.
For us USA citizens, it's going to be the same situation as it is for working on OSS crypto. Blech!
Yeah, it's interesting to think of us (humanity) as an ecosystem that other creatures live in.
What makes us a bigger target (so to speak) for virus and harmful bacteria is simply our sucess at propagating. As I recall, our biomass (number of individuals times average weight) is now greater than any other vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish). Combine that with our habit of living in large, crowded cities, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
The only thing saving us currently (until more anti-virals and antibiotics come along) is good hygine. So wash your hands after you've gone to the bathroom, dammit!
If you're interested in the evolutionary biology view on all this, I recommend Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague".
I agree. I think it'd be better to have a poll of the slashdot community to vote on what new projects we'd like to see. Then for the top (say 5) projects, put up bounties on those two software bazaar sites. Give it a month or so for people to write up their proposals, and let them get coding.
I agree with most of what you've said. I believe a system administrators job is to maximize the long-term availability of the service, not just the service for a particular day (unless there is something unusual about the day, such as a project nearing completion).
If the first thing you do is reboot, then yes, you'll get the service back up and running in the shortest amount of time. But unless you understand why there was a problem in the first place, you haven't really fixed anything.
It's amusing to hear people talk about "transient" failures. With computers, there is almost always an explaination for why something went wrong. It's been my experience that with Windows, it's hard to find that explaination. With Unix systems, it's easier. With OSS Unix systems, it's even easier still.
If your first instinct is to reboot a system, you may be destroying valuable information on the cause of the problem. Such things like what state various daemons were in, which processes were running, etc. While the system is still running, it's possible to extract more debugging information out of the system (which should be analyzed later). For example, you can cause named to dump state information to a file.
So in almost all cases, even if you need to reboot the system, you owe it to yourself to at least gather as much information as possible first.
I don't think anyone should be stressing the point that soring a DVD movie on existing media is impractical.
Why? because media costs will eventually go down. It may be impractical to copy DVDs today, but next year may be a different story. Everyone in the computer industry knows this.
We should just stick to the argument that it's possible to copy a DVD without DeCSS.
FAT12 is for floppy disks, as I recall. You can use less bits for number of allocation units (clusters) because the disk isn't that big.
What you say is certainly true. I should have said 'tied up for our field of use' instead. For this particular domain name (not mentioned here to protect the guilty), it's highly unlikely that anyone would want it except for our field of use. And even if someone wanted this domain name to sell faucets or airline tickets, I wouldn't care.
If they want the domain name, and are going in our field of use, then they'll be in for a fight. We can afford lawyers too.
But I'm not worried either way. The guy who has it now isn't going to use it himself, so he's got to try to find some other sucker to buy it. He'll probably just give it up after a while. And then we'll pick it up cheap. Patience is a virtue,
I work for a company that has a .net domain name, because the .com domain was already taken.
We were recently contacted by the guy who owns the .com domain name, who now wants us to pay him something like USD $10,000 for the .com name.
I told our president that he should defintely not pay. The domain name speculators are just trying to leech money off others, without providing any useful service themselves.
It's kind of funny... the guy (who has the .com name) says he's looking to sell it, and has got other bidders. Hah! We've got the trademark tied up in the USA, so no one else is going to touch it. We'll just wait for it to become available for the regular price.
If people didn't have such a hang-up about .com domain names, there wouldn't be this kind of problem. Granted, we're not looking to start a portal site that people will hopefully stumble across by accident. But I sure as heck didn't find Slashdot by guessing at a domain name. Actually, except for major companies (like IBM) I don't usually try to guess a domain name, but use a directory instead.
Even if I'm trying to start a portal, I'm not going to pay big bucks for a good name. I'll just come up with another.
Wasn't there some research recently with Cephid variable stars that indicated that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate?
The whole idea is kinda crazy, because what could possibly be causing the Universe to expand such a long time after the Big Bang.
Does anyone have any pointers to something on that?
DIPC is quite an interesting idea. I've already read a little on it, and plan to read more. But I can easily see why Linus wouldn't want it in the kernel.
We've already got several mechanisms for doing this kind of thing: from RPC, to PVM and MPI, to heavyweights like CORBA. RPC is in the kernel already, I'm not sure about MPI, and PVM and CORBA are completely in user-space.
Linus probably just doesn't want to add yet a distributed programming mechanism that's (currently) specific to Linux.
Digression: What we really need is a Linux kernel patch repository. That would give people a better idea of the ways in which Linux could be extended, and would be a central place that would give better publicity to projects such as DIPC.
Two small points:
1. The use of the word "raping" shows a strong bias by the author of the quoted section. I am not very likely to take the rest of the section too seriously after encountering such hyperbole.
2. If the 'bot was able to get to the directory (without breaking into the system or using a password) then it wasn't a private directory, it was a public one. If I do a wget on a site, everything it returns is publically available. "Private" means it's not accessible using the normal protocols (in this case, http and ftp).
Are there any other sources of information on this particular incident?
I have a cable modem, and it's great for downloads and on-line games. However, I don't typically use it to download CD images for stuff like Linux or OpenBSD.
Why? The same reason I send money to NPR. They do stuff, and I use it, and I appreciate it. I support them. Often it's the best possible use of my money.
If I like HP's E-Speak, it'll be the same situation. I'll pay a little extra for the "official" distribution. I'd be willing to pay extra for support from them if I needed it.
And if I need some extensive customization of E-Speak, who's the first company I'm going to call? HP of course. If they build up a good reputation with me (and anyone releasing OSS gets a big bonus), I am highly likely to be a customer of theirs in the future.
Having industries based on OSS is the best possible world for me at least. I can just run the stuff myself if I understand it sufficiently. If I have more money that time, I can pay someone else to do so. Maximum choice. I like it.
I'm of the same attitude myself. I'm starting to prefer OpenBSD for things like firewalls, but I wouldn't want to use it as my desktop machine every day. Each has it's place... what it's best at.
Coming from the Linux viewpoint, it's not as if anything big is missing with OpenBSD, but the little things annoy me. Like having to manually install GNU ls (I'd die without --color :-), samba, etc. Yes, that stuff is in the ports tree, but it takes more effort to install and configure.
Take printing for example. With OpenBSD by default, I get the lpd binary and not much more. I have to do the rest myself.
With RedHat Linux (even distributions a year or two old) I can pop up the ol' printtool, point, click, click, read the resulting printcap entry, and I'm done. It already comes with a decent print filter, ghostscript, mpage, the whole 9 yards. It's easy. I like it.
Yes, I know, I'm being lazy. I could read the printcap (5) man page, I could write or find my own print filter. I could, but I don't want to. Setting up printers is so mundane it should be easy and quick (less than 5 minutes).
There are some things that I do want to learn all the details of... where I pore over each line of code to make sure it's correct, like the firewall rules. I don't mind at all spending a couple hours on that.
I'm certainly very glad of the work Theo and the gang are doing, but that doesn't mean that OpenBSD is the be-all and end-all. Neither are any of the Linux distributions I've tried: RedHat (complete and easy to configure, but bloated) and Debian (better install configurations, but slower release schedule and I really don't like dselect). I'm glad they all exist so that I can pick what's right for the job.
Hmph. Instead of getting faster DSL, I may be getting a slower one. Our business is too far from the CO, so they can't install SDSL, even at the lowest speed.
These two ISPs I'm talking to say they might start to support IDSL (or DSL-Lite), which can go longer distances but at a slower bit-rate (140kbps).
Has anyone else had any experience with this?
Yeah, but LEO is where most of the spy satellites are.
Of course, you're not going to pick off some of the most important birds with that missle, because they're in Geosync.
What you'd need is a really big laser. They'd be easy to hit because they dont' move relative to the ground.
I agree, anything with interesting data should have a UPS. I'd still like to be able to use XFS now for my fileservers, but I'll wait at least 6 months for people to work out the bugs.
I've been fairly pleased with Best Power UPSs. They come with free UPS shutdown software for all major Unices, which includes source code (but no, it's not really OSS, sorry). The new Patriot Pro line is smaller and cheaper than the Ferrups ones that I had been buying. Even my fileserver at home is on a UPS. My data is worth it.
If you need OSS software for Solaris, be sure to also check out my friend's web site The Written Word.
He's got a lot of stuff available, and all of it in pkgadd format, and all the stuff at his web site for Solaris installs in /opt, instead of the mix between /usr/local and /opt you see on sunfreeware.com. There's also CD subscriptions available.
I don't think you're going to find many Sparc 20's at close to that price, especially if you start adding a new graphics card and processor.
You don't really want to run the 20's with a full compliment of peripherals because the power supply is puny. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the 10's and 20's (and the 2's) but I wouldn't buy any more today.
The market for S-Bus system stuff is starting to get tight. Ross has been out of business for over a year (at least the division that made upgrades for Sparcs). Some companies that already have a lot of 20's are hoarding them because they can't get spare parts anymore.
If you have to do Solaris SPARC development, I'd get one or two 5's and stick them on the network to run builds. But I certainly wouldn't use them as my main machines. If I can't hang a SGI 1600SW monitor off of it, it's not even worth considering. :-)
I would also assume that because of the better cooling, the systems would be more stable than standard air-cooled ones that have been overclocked.
Does anyone have some stability measures (as opposed to anecdotal evidence) of cryo-cooled systems vs. air-cooled?
I've had a cable modem for about 6 months now with MediaOne (who just got bought out by AT&T)
It works pretty well most of the time. There have been at least a couple outages (6+ hours) in the time I've had it. That's not such a big deal for me, because I've kept my regular ISP account too.
It's certainly great for games (if you play Half-Life:TFC you may occasionaly encounter me as 'Boomer'). That extra 50 ms does make a difference.
So rather than stay here and ramble on books, why don't we all /mail companies and tell them we love Linux and would love their device supported on it?
Heh, these days my favorite companies are the ones who produce devices which have Linux drivers readily available. Since I can now find Linux-compatable drivers for most classes of devices, I don't worry about this stuff too much anymore.
Replying to myself, hmmm....
Charlie Parker's now going to paper-publish his Internet comic Argon Zark so you may want to talk to him about his publisher.
Maybe Wall-streeters thinking that the upcoming Linux-related IPOs are not hot is a good thing... for me. It may give me a chance to buy some shares in VA or someone without having to pay through the nose for it. :-)
Waikato is working on many interesting things, including an OOP called Sather (also a GNU project). I would love to fly down there to work on my Master's for a couple years.
But as with many things, I just don't have the time. I suppose I need to work harder so that I can retire early.
There's a whole bunch of independant publishers out there. Unfortunately, the more money they have, the less likely they are to take a chance on someone they don't know. Just like the rest of traditional media, I suppose.
I guess the trick would be to find a small publishing company that's big enough to have some cash to make an initial run of at least 1000. Here are a couple that seem to be moderately successful (as opposed to wildly successful like Image and Dark Horse):
SIPnet@aol.com,
P.O. Box 271487,
Houston TX, 666-0238
325 S. First St. #301,
San Jose, CA 95113,
(800) 866-8929
Good luck!