You miss the third category: those that cry out loud that the use it to push their marketing, but either plainly refuse to comply with GPL (having none of their clients to actually request code from them) or make acquiring the code prohibitively diffucult with all sorts of bureaucratic shit. That's who concern me most. I haven't actually encountered the latter kind, but of the former kind I know at least one company.
PS.
Having downloaded the "preview kit" from MontaVista, I must admit that they do provide the sources to the kernel.
Nowadays more and more companies sell various soluions based on Linux. Many of there include modifications to the kernel. Where's the source? As far as I understand, they are required to provide the source to their customers, and they're can not prohibit by any means redistribution of the source by the customers.
But I have yet to see a website download section with source. What's happening? Do all those companies act as if the code was in public domain , or BSD-type licensed? What the hell??
The only thing MontaVista's site offers for download is some preview kit. It is an ISO image (uncompressed!!), "encrypted" by some stupid password which gets mailed once you fill out a ridiculously long form on their website and requires Flash 5 to run. I'm downloading it right now, but I'm more than sure there ain't a trace of source to linux source there.
Have anybody got any GPL-d source from them? What holds you from putting it up on the web?
Come on, this shit shouldn't have begun to happen in the first place.
It seems that they've been testing performace of
some code blocks they've called 'kernels' for some
obscure reasons.
That makes the test useless - if they've compiled
some linux kernel by both, say GCC and MSVC and their own compiler - that's where the real results
are to be derived from. Needless to say that they
couldn't do that.
And their (surely optimized) "kernel"s run faster compiled by their own compiler. Bah! No surprise.
Conclusion : this is unfair comparison, and the results of the test say nothing.
Iraq (Desert Storm) - Exos wouldn't do it. Neither would jeeps. That was a ready-made tank war - but only because Sadaam wanted to rule the third-world roost with Cold War-era TOE and tactics. (hint for petty dictators: the US spent 40 years preparing for a major tank war with the Soviet Union. Soviet tanks may be great for oppressing your own villagers and scaring rich but non-martial oil nations, but don't even think about going up against the US with them.)
The bit about Soviet tanks in Iraq is an incorrect comparison - NATO deployed "latest-and-greatest" equipment, and Iraq had bunches of T55s and T62s which date back to 1960s and comparatively few T72s which are only marginally less dated. That war would've been much more longer and painful if they had T-80s with adequate antiaircraft coverage, not to mention that modern tactical missiles instead of SCUDs, based on early 1960s russian design would've accounted for more than a bit of difference.
Now how can you be sure that neither your bank, employer, (or maybe) your insurance company's clerks don't accidentally forget feeding some printout with tons of SSNs (or just one - yours) thru a shredder? Or dumping supposedly "old" computer without bashing and burning the HDD? Not even mentioning them going bankrupt.
I've just recently stubmled upon this in some newspaper, the materials seem to have been declassiffied not so long ago and no one yet bothered to un a full-featured story. Don't think that there's something on the net.
The SU was different country back then, they just put those drunkards back to where they belong and strengthened the system, no international incident, no outcry - nothing.
If there was a slightest chance that your congressman ever notice a letter from Russia telling him/her what to and what not to do, i'd write it instantly.
As there's no such chance, I personnaly urge you to write such a letter, hoping that the US will at last stop supporting totally corrupt, effectively crime state known as Russia, where I am being lucky to live. (it's being much more free than any of other G8 countries and many others, by the way, one just needs to adopt a lifestyle)
And, well, while a good volcanic eruption can of course affect global temp to some extent, it won't nevertheless compare to total effect on environment cased by the US industry (not to mention US-sponsored, via transnational corporations). Having studied environmental engineerieng for 5.5 yrs, I'm now in serious doubt that even restrictions an order of magnitude stricter that Kioto's will significantly offset the harm what was done. We're doomed, pal. Let's have fun!
Those purple elefants are a greate point you made,
but the rest...
You see, no one in the rest of the world wants US defending them. It's just like that gun activists in your country - people must have the right to protect themselves. Or you would rather take the guns away, forget the 2nd Amendment and claim that the Government will protect them?
And the Kyoto Accords have MUCH to do with this.
As I see, Bush denouncing them acted (again and again) on behalf of corporate lobby, not the people. Nothing strange, nothing new. But the contamination of atmosphere is already causing global warming and climate change. I too believe that our stupid species will survive even the next ice formation period (or whatever this is in english), but not so our civilization. If you prefer living in igloo and eating raw fish for next several thousand years only to back your government's action, thats fine, but I'm not.
(global warming according to recent studies CAN lead to change of ocean currents tracks, which will in turn cause unpredictible climate change,
not excluding global ice formation (i.e. Antarctica-like climate for up to 55th parallel and more.))
It's real funny to watch all those idiotic claims like SDI revived, etc, rogue-countries, etc, when a 40-year-old design aircraft (sessna-like) can penetrate country's air defence for about 300 km a t least. Recently learned that in about mid-1970s two dead-drunk Finns flied 350 or so kilometers into (now former) Soviet Union, amnaged to reful at an Air Force airbase, and all attempts to intercept them failed.
Now what it takes to launch an unmanned low-speed low-altitude recon craft (similar to those used in Gulf War), with a 50kg nuclear warhead (i.e. 15-50 Kt) or just a can of spores from an innocent-looking fishing vessel?
Won't help at all. It's you who for some unknown reason think that law can ever prevail over money. Not in Russia. anyway. If even land is being sold without any reference to the process in any law, when local police's job is in fact perfectly analogious to that of any mid-sized gang, and they aren't being financed to afford fuel for the '80s Fiat clones they're supposed to be chasing criminals on, then what do you think happens to such complaints? Being used in closets, that's what. People being busy mocking up statistics for reports, covering up drugdealers, killers and racketiers. No time for enforcing the law - they're busy filling their pockets. And that's not only law enforcement - our entire government is being run like this.
I happen to live near the Moscows' Organized Crime
Fight HQ (bad translation, nevermind.)
and what do i see? BMWs 750iL and 850 - a dozen at least. Not that anybody wonders from where money comes.
If Adobe contacted right people for the job, the Elcomsoft would've disappeared without fuss and smoke. Entirely. And for perfectly legal reason and with perfectly legal means. They just took the wrong approach.
Surfing the warez sites in search of and downloading any of the theKompany products will be one of the things i'll hate myself for doing.. but if their stuff really is way better than GPL alternatives that's what i will have to do. Even $25 blasts a sizeable hole in my monthly income, here in Russia, where all significantly popular closed-source products are sold at the same price as OpenSource/GPL-ed ones (i.e. on the price of CD carrier - about $3 per CD, AutoCAD, Win2000 Server, name it, and a CD typically holds 10-30 products sharing the same niche (i.e. a DTP cd holds about 10 Adobe products, Quark XPress (several versions), font collection and some minor utilities).
(yep, no one in their right mind (with average income) will purchase anything for personal use from a legal vendor, with the exception of local game developers respected here)
No choice - we here either hurt Linux or develop GPL alternatives, if we have time. Way too bad.
Maybe some region-specific prices are possible?
Many of us truly respect the efforts Shawn and his kompany are taking in promoting Linux, even if that's not their primary goal, but we really have little choice.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but AFAIK.NET is (mostly) a virtual machine plus some standartized
"interprocess" communication channels. So running
piece of bytecode on it is entirely different from linking to it, shared or static. It's more like
executing proprietary binaries on a linux system. And nothing in GPL prevent doing this.
Just but why do you think it would be illegal to run.NET-created binaries on GPL-licenced implementation?
Not that MS can't do such sort of thing - by including a clause in their.NET development tools' licence that states that stuff created with those tools shouldn't be run on GPL/like-licenced
implementations. Other way, by 'extending' standards pretty much the way they tried with Java.
Anyway, such restrictions would divert developers from MS devtools to other ones, this won't be any good for MS.
Also, MS can theoretically ban any binaries developed not with their tools from running in their implementation. But there's no point in submitting to ECMA this way.
More, if they open the standard (i.e. go through ECMA) and conform to it themselves, there is no way they can retain control over.NET. So it would be one of two - either they don't open it, or don't conform. Phew. Nothing new, really.
Slashdot Mirror
35860 Gflops is 35.86 Tflops.
They do this so that some local OEMs can bundle the crap and declare that they're not pirates, allowing MS to bash other OEMs that did not care to.
Mind you, here in Russia, no computer is sold w/o windoze installed. Guess how many of those copies are legit.
Amiga? Three minutes boot?
A 500 from floppy? Maybe, but then you're comparing apples to oranges.
A 1200 from hdd - about five seconds.
Having a clue on security is apparently against their policy.
To call script kiddie a type of hacker is both an insult and inconsistency. One is either a script kiddie or a hacker.
Ha!
Writing "White Papers" and doing other various extremely boring stuff that you mention is quite opposite of a good hacker's idea of fun.
Don't you forget that real good hackers do not do what they hate doing. This includes almost everything except actually hacking stuff.
If he is any good, you won't know if he gets naughty.
Why should it go anywhere? It's good enough, and that's the reason version 2.0 is not due any time soon. Insufficient demand.
Anyone with half a wit and Google can assemble CAN/RS232 adapter for under $50. Everything else is software.
Yea they are.
A sufficiently powerful light source will be able to overload the amplifier, with some luck taking it out permanently.
My beloved arcane os is in fact FreeBSD.
You miss the third category: those that cry out loud that the use it to push their marketing, but either plainly refuse to comply with GPL (having none of their clients to actually request code from them) or make acquiring the code prohibitively diffucult with all sorts of bureaucratic shit. That's who concern me most.
I haven't actually encountered the latter kind, but of the former kind I know at least one company.
PS.
Having downloaded the "preview kit" from MontaVista, I must admit that they do provide the sources to the kernel.
Nowadays more and more companies sell various soluions based on Linux. Many of there include modifications to the kernel. Where's the source?
As far as I understand, they are required to provide the source to their customers, and they're can not prohibit by any means redistribution of the source by the customers.
But I have yet to see a website download section with source. What's happening? Do all those companies act as if the code was in public domain , or BSD-type licensed? What the hell??
The only thing MontaVista's site offers for download is some preview kit. It is an ISO image (uncompressed!!), "encrypted" by some stupid password which gets mailed once you fill out a ridiculously long form on their website and requires Flash 5 to run.
I'm downloading it right now, but I'm more than sure there ain't a trace of source to linux source there.
Have anybody got any GPL-d source from them? What holds you from putting it up on the web?
Come on, this shit shouldn't have begun to happen in the first place.
It seems that they've been testing performace of
some code blocks they've called 'kernels' for some
obscure reasons.
That makes the test useless - if they've compiled
some linux kernel by both, say GCC and MSVC and their own compiler - that's where the real results
are to be derived from. Needless to say that they
couldn't do that.
And their (surely optimized) "kernel"s run faster compiled by their own compiler. Bah! No surprise.
Conclusion : this is unfair comparison, and the results of the test say nothing.
That war would've been much more longer and painful if they had T-80s with adequate antiaircraft coverage, not to mention that modern tactical missiles instead of SCUDs, based on early 1960s russian design would've accounted for more than a bit of difference.
Now how can you be sure that neither your bank, employer, (or maybe) your insurance company's clerks don't accidentally forget feeding some printout with tons of SSNs (or just one - yours) thru a shredder? Or dumping supposedly "old" computer without bashing and burning the HDD? Not even mentioning them going bankrupt.
Now just remember how and why the cold war started in the first place.
I've just recently stubmled upon this in some newspaper, the materials seem to have been declassiffied not so long ago and no one yet bothered to un a full-featured story. Don't think that there's something on the net. The SU was different country back then, they just put those drunkards back to where they belong and strengthened the system, no international incident, no outcry - nothing.
If there was a slightest chance that your congressman ever notice a letter from Russia telling him/her what to and what not to do, i'd write it instantly. As there's no such chance, I personnaly urge you to write such a letter, hoping that the US will at last stop supporting totally corrupt, effectively crime state known as Russia, where I am being lucky to live. (it's being much more free than any of other G8 countries and many others, by the way, one just needs to adopt a lifestyle) And, well, while a good volcanic eruption can of course affect global temp to some extent, it won't nevertheless compare to total effect on environment cased by the US industry (not to mention US-sponsored, via transnational corporations). Having studied environmental engineerieng for 5.5 yrs, I'm now in serious doubt that even restrictions an order of magnitude stricter that Kioto's will significantly offset the harm what was done. We're doomed, pal. Let's have fun!
Those purple elefants are a greate point you made, but the rest... You see, no one in the rest of the world wants US defending them. It's just like that gun activists in your country - people must have the right to protect themselves. Or you would rather take the guns away, forget the 2nd Amendment and claim that the Government will protect them? And the Kyoto Accords have MUCH to do with this. As I see, Bush denouncing them acted (again and again) on behalf of corporate lobby, not the people. Nothing strange, nothing new. But the contamination of atmosphere is already causing global warming and climate change. I too believe that our stupid species will survive even the next ice formation period (or whatever this is in english), but not so our civilization. If you prefer living in igloo and eating raw fish for next several thousand years only to back your government's action, thats fine, but I'm not. (global warming according to recent studies CAN lead to change of ocean currents tracks, which will in turn cause unpredictible climate change, not excluding global ice formation (i.e. Antarctica-like climate for up to 55th parallel and more.))
It's real funny to watch all those idiotic claims like SDI revived, etc, rogue-countries, etc, when a 40-year-old design aircraft (sessna-like) can penetrate country's air defence for about 300 km a t least. Recently learned that in about mid-1970s two dead-drunk Finns flied 350 or so kilometers into (now former) Soviet Union, amnaged to reful at an Air Force airbase, and all attempts to intercept them failed.
Now what it takes to launch an unmanned low-speed low-altitude recon craft (similar to those used in Gulf War), with a 50kg nuclear warhead (i.e. 15-50 Kt) or just a can of spores from an innocent-looking fishing vessel?
Who would care to design, build, test ICBMs?
And that's NOT to say of domestic terrorists.
Won't help at all. It's you who for some unknown reason think that law can ever prevail over money. Not in Russia. anyway. If even land is being sold without any reference to the process in any law, when local police's job is in fact perfectly analogious to that of any mid-sized gang, and they aren't being financed to afford fuel for the '80s Fiat clones they're supposed to be chasing criminals on, then what do you think happens to such complaints? Being used in closets, that's what. People being busy mocking up statistics for reports, covering up drugdealers, killers and racketiers. No time for enforcing the law - they're busy filling their pockets. And that's not only law enforcement - our entire government is being run like this.
I happen to live near the Moscows' Organized Crime
Fight HQ (bad translation, nevermind.)
and what do i see? BMWs 750iL and 850 - a dozen at least. Not that anybody wonders from where money comes.
If Adobe contacted right people for the job, the Elcomsoft would've disappeared without fuss and smoke. Entirely. And for perfectly legal reason and with perfectly legal means. They just took the wrong approach.
Sure all this is a great thing.
But.
Surfing the warez sites in search of and downloading any of the theKompany products will be one of the things i'll hate myself for doing.. but if their stuff really is way better than GPL alternatives that's what i will have to do. Even $25 blasts a sizeable hole in my monthly income, here in Russia, where all significantly popular closed-source products are sold at the same price as OpenSource/GPL-ed ones (i.e. on the price of CD carrier - about $3 per CD, AutoCAD, Win2000 Server, name it, and a CD typically holds 10-30 products sharing the same niche (i.e. a DTP cd holds about 10 Adobe products, Quark XPress (several versions), font collection and some minor utilities).
(yep, no one in their right mind (with average income) will purchase anything for personal use from a legal vendor, with the exception of local game developers respected here)
No choice - we here either hurt Linux or develop GPL alternatives, if we have time. Way too bad.
Maybe some region-specific prices are possible?
Many of us truly respect the efforts Shawn and his kompany are taking in promoting Linux, even if that's not their primary goal, but we really have little choice.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but AFAIK .NET is (mostly) a virtual machine plus some standartized
"interprocess" communication channels. So running
piece of bytecode on it is entirely different from linking to it, shared or static. It's more like
executing proprietary binaries on a linux system. And nothing in GPL prevent doing this.
Just but why do you think it would be illegal to run .NET-created binaries on GPL-licenced implementation?
.NET development tools' licence that states that stuff created with those tools shouldn't be run on GPL/like-licenced
.NET. So it would be one of two - either they don't open it, or don't conform. Phew. Nothing new, really.
Not that MS can't do such sort of thing - by including a clause in their
implementations. Other way, by 'extending' standards pretty much the way they tried with Java.
Anyway, such restrictions would divert developers from MS devtools to other ones, this won't be any good for MS.
Also, MS can theoretically ban any binaries developed not with their tools from running in their implementation. But there's no point in submitting to ECMA this way.
More, if they open the standard (i.e. go through ECMA) and conform to it themselves, there is no way they can retain control over